


water and unsettled dust

by neonheartbeat



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon Related, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I'll bring the party hats to the dumpster, I'm in love with everyone in this movie and I want to suffer, Mind Control, Mind Meld, Obsessive Behavior, Reylo - Freeform, The Force, Voyeurism, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-05-12 10:41:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5663299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Kylo Ren realizes he's underestimated his prisoner, things escalate quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> Let me just get this out of the way. If you're going to leave comments saying I'm horrible for writing this 1) I'm just going to write more and 2) nobody asked you to be the Ship Vegan of only wholesome 100% free range ships. I like exploring unhealthy dynamics. Leave it at that.
> 
> Title comes from "Bad Blood" by Atlas.

"How did you _do_ that?" Kylo Ren spat, looking for all the world like an angry predator coming in for wounded prey.

Rey stared at him. It was cold, colder than she was comfortable with. The restraints were hard against her wrists and ankles. Her stomach was full of knots, and her voice was high and trembling when she said "You _are_ afraid," again; and he was—his fear and shock were almost palpable, tingling on the edge of her senses.

He looked so young and vulnerable that she automatically said, "It's all right," and his face hardened.

"Don't patronize me," he snarled, and flung one hand out. Her body jerked and slammed back into the chair. "Don't you _dare—"_

"I'm not!" she gasped, and he released her, his eyes wary and angry.

"I can do whatever I want," he hissed. "I can make you feel whatever I want you to feel. I'm not afraid of you. I'm—I'm _not_."

"Who are you trying to convince?" she asked flatly, and was rewarded with another Force-shove back into her chair. She heard him stalking up to her ear again, and braced herself, staring off into the distance at the wall.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said, gentle as a child. "I don't. But if you don't give me that map, you won't like what I'll do to you."

She took a deep breath, steeling herself. "Try and take it again," she ground out between her teeth, terrified and trying to cover it. "I like watching you twitch and squirm."

Kylo's face clouded again, angry, and he stepped back, regarding her with the same calculating manner a man might look at a wayward dog. "Pain doesn't work on you, that's obvious. You know too much of it already. You're a friend to it. But…" his mouth curved ever so slightly "…the opposite, I think, might have the desired results."

Rey went very still as he lifted his hand, not knowing what he would do—and then the sensation of being touched, stroked—all around her, drifting softly across her face, her neck, her chest.

She hadn't ever had something like this before. Living in the middle of a desert planet hadn't been exactly conducive to gentleness at all, let alone in this way. She'd been baffled by the first friendly touch she'd ever experienced— _stop holding my hand!—_ and here she was, strapped to a table, while the fist of the First Order sat ten feet away and used the Force to—well, she wasn't quite sure.

"How are you doing that?" she demanded, half breathless.

"It's simple. I could explain it, but I'd rather watch you," he said, and a shudder went up her spine.

The sensation doubled in intensity, and she fought back a gasp as an invisible hand pressed up against her thigh and slid to dead center, sending spasms up through her belly. She desperately wanted to clamp her legs together, but she couldn't. Burning heat suffused her face and she was intensely aware of Kylo Ren's long, pale face watching her avidly.

"Tell me where the droid is. Show me the map," he coaxed. "Come now. Be reasonable."

"It's—" she bit her words off, clamped her mouth down, and shivered again as another spasm of heat flushed her body. "On. Oh. _Ohhhhh_." Humiliation colored her face and she looked away, tears gathering in her eyes. For a fleeting instant, the wall she'd mentally built cracked, and Kylo snapped to attention like a heat-seeking missile.

"I see the droid," he said softly. "Come. Show me the map. The map."

"The map," Rey echoed, her voice gone thin and rough as her clothes. She refused to think about the map. No. Anything but the map. She focused instead on the sensation between her legs and in her belly, and prayed to whatever was listening that it would distract Kylo.

She heard his sharp intake of breath, and his step back. "Clever try," he said. "It won't work."

"Figured it was worth a shot," she panted, and he smirked at her, redoubling the attack. "Please!" she gasped, baring her teeth and arching her back. Sweat stood out on her forehead—she felt it dripping down her temples. The intensity was throbbing, building, unbearable—she couldn't think of anything at all, there was no map, no droid, nothing but her and the horribly pressing desire to finish herself off, which she couldn't do because of the bloody _restraints._

"I can keep you right here for as long as I want to," he said quietly. She let out an inarticulate wail. "Show me the map."

"Go—to—hell—" she gasped out, and used her last ounce of conscious thought to focus on him, the link, the Force—oh. He was using the Force to manipulate her synapses and her brain functions, that was it, there was no invisible hand at all. Obviously not that simple, as she was teetering on the brink of climax in less than a minute. It had to be some kind of sensory manipulation.

Rey gritted her teeth and reached out in the Force, mentally grabbed the link, and did exactly what she'd done with his first attempt. She _flipped_ it, finding her way through the link back to him, and for a fleeting second the one way channel in the Force was reversed.

Kylo Ren staggered and dropped like a sack of potatoes as sudden and quick relief hit Rey. She pushed harder, not knowing what she was doing—he'd _built_ the link, after all; she was simply flipping the direction it was going—and Kylo let out a desperately reedy noise, his black-gloved hands clawing at the floor. "N—no, stop, _stop_ —"

It was extremely gratifying, after all. "I think I can keep you there as long as I need to," she said, and focused hard, taking in his thoughts as she pressed him. He was tense, disoriented, his pulse remarkably elevated, and his lower circulatory system was certainly doing a fine job of operating. Rey reached, found certain nerve endings, lit them into sensation with the Force.

Kylo made a very peculiar choking noise and dragged himself up off the floor to a sitting position, wriggled out of his robe and cowl and shoved a hand down into his pants. His tousled hair was already sticking to his forehead with sweat, his eyes wild and desperate, his pale long face flushed with color.

Rey thought, _coward,_ and with one pull of the Force his hands were pinned to the wall. It didn't even take effort. "You don't get to touch," she informed him.

" _You're_ the one in the chair!" he snapped petulantly, and she _pressed_ again and he shuddered hard and threw his head back, gasping.

She could see what he saw, feel what he felt, though it wasn't strong enough to incapacitate her. Smatterings of half-strung sentences, flashes of images, memories. A man—a handsome man with a bloody face and wavy dark hair, olive skin, thrashing in the restraints she was currently in, moaning, his throat tense, sweat dripping off his face. She recognized his jacket, but not his face, and it took a minute to hit her. "Poe Dameron," she said, and Kylo reacted like someone had pointed a blaster at his head. "You did this to Poe Dameron, didn't you?"

"Y—yes—" he panted, and a shudder went through him like a bantha shaking off bloodflies.

"He couldn't protect himself," she said, angrily watching the scene unfold avidly behind Kylo's eyes. "It wasn't a fair fight. How _could_ you?"

The only answer was a groan as Kylo tried to right himself against the wall and failed.

"You'll never do this to me or anyone again. Say it." Rey's vision shifted peculiarly, just left of center, and she saw herself (or maybe it was herself through Kylo's eyes, and Kylo through her eyes?) saw that she was focused, laserlike, a bright point of light in the Force. Kylo was a turbulent mess, a cloud boiling over with a thunderstorm on the brink of exploding. "Say it!"

"I'll never—do it again—to you or anyone else," he whined, and threw his head back, his neck corded with tendon and muscle. "I swear, I swear,I sw—aaaaah, swear, s— _nnngh_."

Rey reached out and ever so gently upped the pressure, and Kylo's hips jerked erratically as his cock emptied itself into his pants, untouched. She could feel the intensity of it through the Force, intense shame coupled with bliss. He made several very long, rough, low noises before rolling his head over to look at her.

His cheeks were still flushed and his hands were shaking. "You—you—" he struggled to get out, and shoved himself up from the floor to huddle against the wall, chest heaving, eyes wild. "Who are you?"

"I'm no one," she said, slightly abashed, and stared at him. She was still holding onto the link in the Force, the bond still strong. She could feel his heart beating hard, his shaking legs. "You—" She frowned, and his flush deepened as she probed further into his thoughts. "You—you _liked_ that."

"I—" He jerked to his feet, and she could feel the sense of discomfort as his wet pants stuck to his skin. "You little _minx_ ," he growled, and the connection she'd maintained so carefully was snapped as he raised his hand and threw her back into the headrest. Her stomach clenched in fear.

"Don't!" she gasped, eyes wide and rolling as she tried to find him without moving her head. "Don't, you promised, you—"

"I'm not using the Force for this," he said, and then his hands found her belt and unbuckled it, pulled it off and away. "I am," he pushed her wrap off her shoulders, "a man of my word," a black-gloved hand gripped her tunic and pulled up, slowly, "whatever else I may be."

Rey froze. His glove was warm and the leather was smooth. It felt—she was terrified, and still restrained, but it felt—nice, almost. _I thought he wanted—_ and then she stopped herself from thinking about BB-8, scared he'd see, scared he'd stop.

Kylo… wasn't paying attention to her thoughts. He was focused on her clothing. "You smell like the desert," he said. "Like oil and wind and sweat and grease." He paused as he knelt down, and Rey blinked, looking down at him. "It's—interesting."

"Interesting," she echoed.

"Most women I encounter bathe semi-frequently," he said, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk.

She felt stung. Once a month in the showers by the communal moisture-gatherers was good enough for anyone. "Most men I encounter aren't so handsy." She paused. "Or moody."

He rested a gloved hand on her calf. "I want to take your boots off. I will have to release your legs in order to do so. I want your word that you won't kick me."

Rey swallowed, staring at him. She could slip free, kick him in the face. But if her arms were still trapped? "I won't," she said finally.

"You know I can tell when you're lying," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "I won't," she said again, and meant it. She was curious about what he meant to do. He seemed satisfied and released the restraints with a wave of his hand, then carefully cupped the back of her knee. Rey flinched automatically at the contact, and he stilled until she relaxed, then untied the thong at the back of her boot, loosened it gently, and slid it off her foot.

The air was cold against her bare toes. "What are you going to do to me?" she asked, still wary.

"Don't worry. You'll enjoy it. But in the off chance you don't, feel free to say so. I did promise, after all." He slipped her other shoe off, then stood, looming over her. "I want to keep your legs free. Don't make me regret that decision," he said silkily, and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

She suddenly felt very warm and very aware of every inch of her own skin. _I won't beg. I won't._

"There's no shame in begging here," he said, and her mouth went dry. He'd heard? "You were right. I liked it."

He knelt again, pulled her sandsilk pants away from her belly and eased them down her thighs. Rey tried to remember how to breathe. It was far too warm in the room. "You're doing it to me again," she accused, half-panicked.

"No, I'm not," he said, and raised an eyebrow. "Have you never felt arousal before?"

"I—not with—no," she stammered, and he stopped, pulled her pants back up to her waist. "Wait—no, what are you doing, stop, go back—"

"Rey," he said, and her name on his lips was unexpected and strange. "Never?"

She didn’t have to ask for clarification. "Never," she said, flushed to the ears.

Kylo Ren stared at her for almost half a minute before dropping back down to his knees. "Tell me what you want."

"You—" Her head was spinning. Tell him what she wanted? She wanted to run, and yet— "Do what you were doing before." He reached up and pulled her pants down again, slipping them off her ankles. She swallowed and tried to sound confident. "Underthings too."

Kylo reached up again, hooking his leather-clad thumbs into her underwear, and pulled them down slowly. Rey blushed hotly as he left a hand lingering on her hip, his eyes fixed on her body. "Do what you want," she said hastily, and he glanced up, a flash of dark eyes in that pale face, before leaning forward and kissing her on the upper thigh, the crease between her thigh and her—and—oh— _oh_.

Rey's whole body jerked in shock and she nearly screamed. "S—stop! Stop! Kylo, stop!"

He immediately pulled away, looking worried. "Rey?"

"I—" she was shaking, tears gathering in her eyes again. "It's—it's so much. I—it—it's—"

"It's all right," he said gently, and laid a hand on her thigh. "Here. This might be better." He peeled his glove off and dropped it on the floor, then lightly touched her with his bare hand. "Forgive me," he murmured, his fingers delicate as moth's wings. "You're not as used to certain things as others are. You must be sensitive."

Rey took a small breath as his fingers circled closer to her center and the spot that he'd found that had made her scream. "Just a little—" she managed, and then his fingers were working on her and she was shaking, making tiny delighted noises as she kicked her feet into the chair. "Kylo! That's—that—you—"

"Me," he said, and thumbed her gently, giving her a rhythm. "You like this?"

Rey leaned forward as far as she could and gasped for air. "Please," she wheezed, and grimaced in concentration. She was getting close. "Faster, just a little."

He obeyed, and she made an extremely undignified noise and lifted her right leg, bracing her heel against the open lock. "Yes! Please yes, yes, yes—"

She came hard on his hand, grinding her heel against the chair and gasping, head back, throat exposed. Then she collapsed back into the chair, shivering.

"Again?" he asked, and she lifted her head.

"Again, what d'you mean again?"

"Human females can have multiple orgasms," he informed her, and licked his thumb. "So. Again?"

" _Yes_ ," she affirmed, and he bent to his task a second time.

"You'll be less sensitive this time around," he said, and the next time he opened his mouth, it was on her.

Rey gasped and brought both her legs up to trap his head. "Please," she whimpered, and he hummed somewhere, sending vibrations through her body. "More, give me more." He did.

When she came a third time, it was with her thighs around his head and her toes curled into his back. His hair was softer than she'd thought, and she wanted—she thought, as she came down and relaxed into her bonds again—wanted to touch it.

Kylo stood, somewhat unsteady on his feet, his bare hand working against his black cloak. He looked torn. "If I—" he paused, swallowed. She sensed his genuine arousal and wavering resolve. "If I open your restraints, will you attack me?"

Rey blinked at him through a fog of endorphins and couldn't remember why, exactly, she wanted to escape. "No," she said.

He waved a hand and the arm restraints sprang open. Before she had time to move, he said, "You'll be all right," and she caught another motion of his black-gloved hand before darkness overtook her and she fell.

~

When Rey opened her eyes, she was lying on a soft surface, very comfortably, wearing her pants, shirt, and arm wraps, but nothing else. She sat up, startled, and saw her wrap  and belt sitting on a chair by the foot of the bed, her boots meticulously lined up underneath. Kylo Ren was sitting on the other chair, divested of his robe and cowl, wearing a simple black tunic and pants, his heavy boots planted on the floor.

"You're awake," he said. "Good."

"Where am I?" She looked around at the gleaming back walls.

"You're in my quarters. Nobody saw us or questioned me. Your things are all here." He looked like he didn't know what to do with her.

"How long was I asleep?"

"About an hour. Are you hungry? I can have something brought up."

Her stomach growled at the mention of food. "Why are you being kind to me?"

Kylo didn't answer. Instead he went to the wall and pressed a switch. "If you're thirsty, there's water there by the bed."

Rey turned and saw a carafe and a glass. "All that?" she blurted out, shocked.

"Drink it all, if you like. There's more."

Rey swung her legs off the bed and unstopped the carafe, pouring the clear water into the glass with hands that shook only a little. She'd never seen water so clear. She lifted the glass to her mouth and sipped, then gulped it down. It was _fresh_ and pure and sweet and cool.

"That's the best thing I've ever tasted," she said, water trickling down her chin when she was finished.

"Wait until you see the food," he said, and gave her a small lift of the mouth that could have been a smile.

The food was incredible. Meat, fresh greens, something sweet and clear and soft that tasted like fruit, some kind of soup she'd never had before. Warm, real bread, not dehydrated portion packs. Kylo watched her eat it with a strangely hungry look on his face, and when she was done, he pointed to the other door in the wall.

"The 'fresher is in there. Feel free."

Rey went in and gaped at the fixtures. She spent a full five minutes splashing water on her face and grinning at the pure luxury of clean, drinkable water coming out of the spigot, then decided she might as well wash the rest of her. She worked out the knobs in the recessed shower, then stripped and hopped into the cold spray, shivering in delight.

She found a cloth and some sort of foaming substance in a bottle, sniffed it curiously, and wrinkled her nose as the scent of mint wafted past her nose. Not to be deterred, she squeezed it into the cloth and proceeded to wash herself all over as suds ran down the small drain.

"You know, it's supposed to be hot water that you bathe in," Kylo Ren said from behind her, sounding amused. "And that's for your hair, not your body."

Rey jumped, startled, and instinctively covered herself with her hands. "Have you ever heard of knocking?" she demanded.

"The knob to the left, there. Twist it." He sat on the bench and undid the clasps on his boot, pulled it off, un did the other. Rey, torn between watching him and wondering why anyone would want to bathe in hot water, leaned down and adjusted the valve.

Warm water cascaded over her, and she relaxed almost immediately into the spray. The base's air was cold—she could see why the water would be hot. She darted her eyes over to Kylo, who was removing his tunic. He lifted his arms and yanked it off and she caught sight of a long, leanly muscled torso scored with gashes that looked as if they were burn scars. Some were faint, some not so faint.

He looked at her. "Do I still frighten you?"

Rey took a small breath, blinking under the water. "No."

"I can tell when you're lying," he said again, and tossed his tunic onto the bench carelessly. "You fear me. You still think me a monster."

He looked so young, she thought. "No," she said aloud, and stepped out of the shower, naked and shivering. "You're not a monster. You were—you frighten me, but you were kind to me."

"One good deed does not a good man make," he said.

Rey crossed to him and put her arms down, resolute. "No, but it's a start, isn't it?"

His jaw worked for a second, his strangely expressive face trembling. She reached up and traced the deepest scar, the one across his chest, and he flinched at her touch. 'Don't," he said, almost inaudibly.

"Do they hurt?" she asked.

Kylo's eyes flicked up and met hers. "You," he said. "You're—a scavenger." He sounded almost confused, his voice soft. "No one. But—"

"But?" she echoed, and touched another scar.

"I want." He looked almost stunned, standing there half-naked with his wide eyes staring. "You."

Rey felt her whole body go tense. "This—it's a trick, isn't it?" she said, and stepped away, heat rising in her face. "You—this is a trick, you're—you're lying, no one wants me, no one ever wanted me; they left me alone and never came _back_ —"

"No. No. You see, we do have something in common," he said, and offered another smile.

"I don't trust you," she said after a silence.

"You are my prisoner, so I don't expect you to," he said. "But I've fed you and given you water and let you see me as I am, if that means anything. If you want nothing at all between us, I'll have to level the playing field." He gestured at his trousers and smirked.

Curiosity mingled with apprehension rose in her. Rey had rarely ever met another human man, let alone ever seen one naked. "Go on, then," she said, and chewed on her lip.

"As you wish," he said, and hooked his thumbs into his pants, undoing the fasteners and shrugging out of them. Rey felt her heart speed up and tried her hardest not to stare as he pulled them off and tossed them to the side, then looked at her. "Never?" he asked.

"Never," she admitted, and swallowed. He was fully hard, likely had been for a while judging by the flush to it. "Does it hurt?" she asked.

"No. Uncomfortable, but not painful." Kylo's throat moved as he swallowed. "Sit," he said, pointing to the bed. "I'll give you a briefing."

Rey sat, tucking her bare legs under her. Kylo sat down by her, his black hair making for a sharp contrast with his pale skin. "How much do I need to tell you about this?" he inquired.

"I—I know where it goes," she said, blushing ferociously again. "If that's what you mean."

"Right." Kylo pointed to his own cock, to the underside where the head met the shaft. "This place is very sensitive. So is this," he pointed to the head, "and here," he tapped lightly at his hipbones. "Nipples. Neck. Some places on the back."

Rey felt as if she should say something. "Oh," she said feebly.

"And you?" he asked.

She blinked for a second. "Um. I'm not—I—"

"Never," he said, and nodded. "I'll teach you. Don't worry. Do you trust me?"

Rey looked at him. "I will," she promised, and then quickly amended. "For this, I mean."

"I'm going to touch you," he said, and when she nodded, he brought his hands up and brushed her nipples with his fingers.

"Oh!" she gasped, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Sensitive," he said appreciatively, and tweaked her left one gently. She shrieked and grabbed his forearm, panting, before returning the favor. He stiffened and his cock jerked once, hard; his other hand found the back of her neck. "Good," he gasped, and his fingers curled in her damp hair. She hadn't bothered taking it out of her topknots. "Hair, down; I want to see you," he demanded, almost whining.

Rey reached up and undid her knots, letting her hair fall loose around her cheeks. "Like this?' she asked, and Kylo let out a soft noise, reaching for her hair.

"Lovely," he said, and inched closer, his hands in her hair, rolling and gently carding through it.

Rey shuddered and relaxed. Nobody had touched her like this in so long. She thought perhaps no one had done it to him either, so she reached up and tentatively touched the thick black mane that fell to his neck.

"Don't muss it too badly," he said, a note of anxiety coloring his voice.

"Brat," she said, and grabbed a soft handful of hair, scrubbing her fingertips through it like he'd done to her.

Kylo trembled under her hands and caught himself before he fell to the bed. "Oh," he moaned faintly, high color in his cheeks. "Oh. Please."

"You didn't tell me about this," Rey said accusingly, and dug her fingers in deeper.

"I don't—tell—any— _ohhhhh_ —" Kylo bit down on his lower lip and let his grip slip down her neck to her arm.

"Sensitive," she mimicked, and he raised his head up to look at her.

"Minx," he growled, and she scraped her blunt nails across his scalp in reply. Kylo whimpered and leaned into it, his neck straining.

She was in control, she realized, and pulled him closer. "I want you to—I want you to do what you did to me before," she said. "With your mouth."

Kylo almost immediately slid off the bed and positioned himself between Rey's knees, pulling her closer and cupping her rear with both hands. She buried her hands in his hair again, and felt him shiver against her thighs. "Come on," she demanded, and he laid a kiss on her thigh before delving in again, opening her up.

Rey tightened her grip and gasped all the way up and through her climax, gasping gently as Kylo let her down easy, her fingers loosening from his hair. She barely noticed him climbing up onto the bed beside her, drowsy as she was, and only roused when he began to kiss her on the neck, working his way down her body.

She reached down blindly and grabbed at him, his cock filling her hand like her staff, warm and somehow reassuring. "Ooh," she said, and Kylo stopped and pushed into her hand with a soft sound.

"I—" he began, and she pushed down experimentally, drawing his cock through her fist and back again, and his low, pleasant voice cut off into a high pitched whine as his hips jerked forward again.

"I know where it goes," she reminded him.

"All right," he gasped, and fumbled with her for a second with shaky hot fingers, pushed her up against the wall, lined himself up, and pushed in.

Rey scrabbled at his back and yelped in shocked delight. She hadn't known anything in the galaxy could feel like this, could feel so raw and open and warm and solid. Kylo clearly looked like he was feeling something similar, with a look on his face much like he'd had when she'd raked through his hair.

"Hold still," he gasped, and she gripped a handful of his hair, making him jerk and shudder inside her.

"Shut up," she panted, half-hysterical with sensation. "Shut— _up—_ "

"Rey," he whimpered, and she struggled with him for a second before rolling him over to his back, wrestling him down, and holding him down with an arm across his throat. His eyes rolled back and he moaned, a blissful noise.

"If you move," she hissed, "I'll do something you're not going to like."

"Yes," he groaned, and Rey began to move, small noises escaping her throat as a world of new sensations opened up between her legs and somewhere north of her thighs. Kylo remained still, a whimper occasionally escaping him, his fingers digging into her thighs. "Rey," he wheezed, thin and reedy and panicked, as she tried a different angle. " _Rey_ —don't—I'm—"

"Shut _up_ , you brat," she snapped, half-breathless, and he went loose and pliant under her like a pile of cloth, and she felt a strong surge in the Force as he desperately tried to keep his composure, but didn't sense his panic.

 _You promised,_ she thought, half-panicked herself, and lashed out in defense, piercing into his mind and seeing the terror and the exhilaration and the pang of humiliation, _brat,_ and—

"You like that," she said, and slowed her rhythm, intrigued. "When I call you a brat."

Kylo Ren's eyes went glassy as his face flushed. "Don't," he said, half-begging, his fingers still tight on her legs.

"Brat," she said, and tweaked his left nipple.

"Please," he said when he could speak again, mortified, and she leaned down onto him and tugged at his hair again.

The Force shimmered and wavered as he desperately tried to use it to stabilize. "I can feel it too," she said. "I know how this ends. It's all right."

Kylo gripped her by the wrists and flipped her over with a grunt, landing her on her back. "You're mine," he growled, and thrust into her hard. Rey gasped and writhed, unable to touch him as her hands were pinned above her head. "Mine. I can—I can do anything I want to you."

She let out a pathetic noise and gripped him with her legs, bare skin on bare skin. "Yes," she gasped mindlessly, and Kylo bent his neck and brought his head down to mark her mouth in a savage mockery of a kiss, his teeth and tongue shoving into her mouth. Rey probed at his mind again with the Force, and saw—

— _have to do it—Snoke will want her—I can't let him have her—mine—strong—please—_

"Please," she gasped, and he choked out a sobbing noise into her neck and she realized how very, very afraid he was as his body stilled and shook against hers. "It doesn't have to be like this," she said. "You can go far away from here."

"I can't," he moaned, eyes wild and full of tears. "I can't, I can't—" He slid off her, out of her, onto the floor and dragged her forward again despite her weak half-protests, kneeling and mouthing at her core with all the desperate urgency he could muster. Rey took his hair into one hand and gripped the bed with the other and came in less than a minute.

This had to be the strangest day of her entire life, she thought, still partially shocked, as Kylo raised himself up and crawled towards her.

"I'll be quick," he whispered, and he was.

They lay side by side on the bed in silence for a while to catch their breath, both sweating even though the room was cool. Rey glanced over at Kylo a few times, and caught him looking at her too. Feeling foolish, she propped herself up on one elbow and looked at him.

He would be handsome if his face wasn't so long and his ears weren't so big, she thought. He had a good face. A face that might have been any young man on any planet, doing anything.

Kylo's mouth twitched, and she frowned. "You're reading me again, aren't you?"

"Can't help the nose," he said. "Or the ears."

She reached out to read him, and found only faint amusement, and a small degree of unexpected tenderness. "How do you read words in peoples' heads? I can only see your emotions."

"That's all done on my end, what you're reading. I don't often think in words. Too specific. This way my thoughts are truly protected." He reached up and stroked the back of her arm with a finger, almost cautiously.

"Oh," she said.

"You're strong with the Force," he said. "You need a teacher. I…I could teach you how to use it."

"And be like you?" she asked, with a small measure of disdain.

"No. Maybe. I don't know."

"Is this another trick?"

He sat up and stared at the wall, then put his head in his hands. His scarred back rippled in the light. "I don't know," he muttered, and abruptly got up, grabbing for his clothes. "Get dressed," he said. "I need to have you back in the interrogation room before someone comes looking."

Rey scrabbled for her clothes as he pulled on his own clothes and ran a brush through his hair. "Here," he said, and handed it to her.

She brushed her own hair back, enjoying the sensation, and tied it back into the knots. "Do we have to go?" she asked plaintively, and he glanced at her.

"I'm afraid so," he said, face unreadable, and she stood up. "I'll be taking you out how I brought you in. Safety measure. You understand."

"Yeah," she said heavily, and he almost smiled before a surge in the Force left her boneless and everything went comfortably black.

~

Kylo Ren finished securing Rey to the interrogation table, then stepped back and perused his handiwork. Her head flopped forward—she was obviously exhausted. He thought for a moment, then tilted the chair back so that her neck would not strain.

She looked calm, lying there. Peaceful. Undisturbed. Dreaming of her ocean. Kylo reached one hand out and gently touched a strand of her hair, careful not to wake her.

 _Snoke_ , he thought, and involuntarily shuddered. Snoke would want her. Would have to know. Because after all of it, he still hadn't gotten the map.

 _Come to me at once,_ thundered the summons in his head through the Force, and Kylo Ren straightened and walked out, picking up his helmet along the way.

He would go face Snoke, unmasked, nothing to hide, and Snoke would demand the girl be brought to him, and then he would go back and get her and get them both off this forsaken planet and as far away from the Supreme Leader as possible. They could take a surveillance shuttle—she was a good pilot and nobody would suspect another shuttle departing.

Taking a moment to carefully bury his intentions in his mind so deep even the Supreme Leader would not be able to find them, he strode out of the room. "You," he said to the nearest Stormtrooper. "Guard this door and make sure no one but me enters or leaves."

"Yes, sir," said the trooper, and stepped inside, palming the door shut.

Naboo. She'd like Naboo. Kylo fought to suppress his traitorous thoughts and the rising horrified excitement at his own insubordinate behavior as he stalked through the halls. They could find a house on a lake somewhere. He had plenty of credits to his name. He could teach her the ways of the Force, teach her everything he'd learned from everyone.

And maybe one day when this was all over and gone, he could bring her back and take her to meet his f—

The doors of the hall opened, and Kylo, Master of the Knights of Ren, walked down to meet his lord.

~

Kylo raced through the halls as fast as he could without raising suspicion. Everything was going perfectly. Snoke had commanded him to bring her to him, just as he'd expected. She was likely awake by now, disoriented and afraid and confused, and he would sweep in, dismiss the guard, and get her out and take her to Hangar One, not Hangar Three—it was smaller and out of the way and less likely to be noticed—

The door to her cell was wide open. The Stormtrooper was gone. The restraints were open, and the chair was empty.

"No," he said, numb shock giving way to fury.

So she was going to attempt to escape. He would have no choice but to hunt her down. And if he couldn't find her and bring her back, he would have to do something else to keep Snoke satisfied that he was, indeed, still playing on his side.

_…in the hands of your father, Han Solo._

"No!" he said again, and the saber sprang into his hand. He ignited it violently and slashed the interrogation chair apart. Glowing chunks of red-hot metal skittered along the floor and out the door, into the hallway, sparks gathering and floating and disappearing like Rey had done.

When he had finished destroying First Order property to his satisfaction, he shut off his lightsaber and sent out a silent prayer to the Force. _Keep my father away from this place. Keep them all away._

The Force did not answer back. The Force was impartial, a tool to be used. Kylo Ren cursed silently and stormed out of the room.

He did not look back.


	2. Disintigrating

It wasn't that he was distracted by her, Kylo Ren told himself as he frantically stormed through the entirety of Starkiller Base looking for Rey. It was that he was singularly focused.

He sensed the familiar cadence of his father through the Force as he gave orders, and stopped, shocked, halfway through his sentence.

_He can't be here. What is he doing here?!_

He moved away and did another round, grabbed a squadron and headed into the oscillator. Rey wasn't in the hangars, and no unauthorized departures had taken place—she was hiding, then. He needed to ignore the presence of his father; maybe if he kept moving he wouldn't have to come in contact at all and when Snoke questioned him later he could simply say, _I had other things on my mind, my lord; I was looking for the scavenger girl,_ and nobody would question him, and they could both walk away from this place and never meet again.

When he was halfway across the catwalk and the voice of his father barked, "BEN!" in a sharp command that echoed off the walls of the thermal oscillator, Kylo Ren was suddenly seven years old, stopped in his tracks by his father's stern shout.

He was once again Ben Solo—but only for a second.

 _You fool,_ he thought in horror. _You were **behind** me; you could have left. Why did you call me?_

He stared at the opposite wall as his heart sank into his belly, and he turned around to face Han Solo.

He nearly said, "Father," and had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop the tremor in his throat.

"Han Solo," he said instead. "I've been waiting for this day for a long time."

"Take off that mask. You don't need it." His father looked old, old and tired.

"What do you think you'll see if I do?" Kylo fired back.

_Please. Father. Go. Run. You could have run. Why did you come after me?_

"The face of my son," Han said firmly.

Kylo hesitated, then reached up and pulled his mask off, revealing his face to his father for the first time in more than a decade. "Your son is gone," he intoned, desperately trying to keep his composure. "He was weak and foolish, like his father, so I destroyed him."

Han stepped closer and shook his head. "That's what Snoke wants you to believe, but it's not true. My son is alive."

"No. The Supreme Leader is wise." That sounded like something Kylo Ren would say, he decided.

_Oh, Father, if you have any sense left, run. The sun is going out._

His father was still coming towards him, unbelievably. "Snoke is using you for your power. When he gets what he wants, he'll crush you." He came to stand not an arm's length away. "You know it's true."

Kylo cracked. "It's too late," he whispered.

"No, it's not. Leave here with me. Come home. We miss you." There was, as usual, not a shred of deception in his father's words, and Kylo tasted a memory of Han's through the Force; his mother, her eyes more wrinkled at the corners than he remembered, saying, _if you see our son, bring him home._

_Oh, mother. You've doomed him. You've doomed us both._

Kylo wanted to scream, _It's not that easy! If I do, Snoke will find us and kill you both!_ Instead, he ground his teeth and let tears fill his eyes. "I am being torn apart," he said.

_Run. Run. Please. While you can._

Han did not move. Kylo continued, shakily. "I want—to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?"

The plea for help. It would bring Han closer, make him put his guard down.

"Yes," said his father, immediately. "Anything." He stepped closer to Kylo and looked him dead in the eyes.

The panic disappeared, replaced by calm resignation. Slowly, Kylo unholstered his saber, and held it out in front of Han. His father looked shocked, almost exhilarated, young again. He reached for it and clasped his hand around the hilt.

High above them, the last vestiges of sunlight flickered, went dim, and disappeared, leaving both of them in darkness, lit only by the sparse lighting inside the oscillator. He felt his father pull at the hilt, then again, more insistently, and just before Kylo pressed his thumb down on the emitter he sensed his father's sudden panic and realization that something was very, very wrong.

A scarlet spear of crackling, unstable energy shot through Han Solo's chest and out his back.

Somewhere high above him, Kylo Ren heard two screams and a Wookie howl.

"Thank you," he said to his father, and yanked the blade out of his chest. Han staggered, looked at him, and brought one hand up to gently touch his face, and Kylo saw through the point of contact in the Force—a very clear memory, one cherished over years and years—a hand cupped around the tiny cheek of a crying, dark-haired, red-faced baby in a medical bay, overwhelming happiness coloring every line and shape, and Leia's—Mother's—voice saying _We'll call him Ben_.

Then the memory faded, sputtered like a bad holocast; and there was nothing, no Force connection, no image. Han Solo's body crumpled like a doll and fell off the catwalk and down into the bowels of the oscillator.

Kylo stepped back, numb, and tried to move. He heard, faintly, Chewbacca roaring in fury, and then something bright flashed past and hit him hard in the side. Kylo collapsed, his legs thrown out from under him, and smashed into the catwalk, grappling for purchase. He could hear fire being exchanged as Chewbacca took his rage and grief out on the squadron he'd brought with him—fine. That was what they were there for, after all.

There was a loud explosion, and Kylo jerked to his knees in time to see the walls explode and begin to cave in. _I need to get off this bridge,_ he thought, and looked up—

She was there. Rey. She had seen it all. She was standing with the renegade Stormtrooper, the traitor, FN-2187, and she was sobbing.

Kylo Ren dragged himself up to stand and began lurching forward off the catwalk as they both ran out the exit. He knew a shorter way. They would not leave the planet without seeing him first. He would wound the traitor first, if he could; and then he would talk Rey into leaving with him.

He would make it right. He would make all of it right.

~

Outside in the snow, Finn and Rey scrambled through the forest. "The Falcon's this way," Finn called, pointing her through the trees. Both of them were gasping for air, tears freezing on their cheeks.

Softly, off in the distance, an electric, crackling hum burst into being. Rey froze. She knew that sound.

Finn looked at her, and slowly, they moved forward, staying close to each other in the snow.

Kylo Ren was waiting, a horrible leer on his long, pale face; his hair stuck to his forehead like a hood over his wild, burning eyes—a vine-tiger waiting for its prey. "We're not done yet," he snarled, the ruby blade sprouting from his fist, drenching him and the forest in red light.

"You're a monster!" Rey shouted, and he shook her off.

"It's just us now. Han Solo can't save you." Kylo straightened painfully and hit himself in the side, where the blast from the bowcaster had hit him. Rey saw blood on the snow, dark in the red light. Seeing her chance to strike, she lifted the blaster and aimed with a cry—

—and Kylo Ren made a small hand gesture and Rey went flying thirty feet with a scream, slamming into a tree and falling into a crumpled heap in the snow. She did not move.

"Rey!" screamed Finn, and scrambled over to her, trying to rouse her. "Rey! No, no, no!"

Kylo could barely contain his contempt and pain. He could _feel_ her life quite clearly though the Force; she was alive, and that shrieking idiot was far too blind to see it. He slashed his blade in a mock salute. " _Traitor!_ " he screamed, his fury boiling over.

_How dare you. How dare you betray the Order, how dare you leave it all behind when I cannot._

Finn turned, and in response, activated—the—no. Impossible. _Impossible._

"That lightsaber," Kylo growled, "belongs to _me_."

"Come get it," said Finn, calm and centered as a summer day.

Kylo lunged at him. Finn deflected his attack. Kylo snarled and tried again, but Finn blocked again—and then countered, actually attacked him. Kylo grinned. _Oh, I am going to enjoy this._

Again, and again the blades met, smoking and sizzling; and then Kylo made the mistake of not watching for his enemy's footing and Finn got a cut in, high on his right shoulder. Kylo hissed, more angry than wounded, and forced Finn into a boxed position against a tree, bearing down on him, twisting his saber so that the crossguard burned a hole in the disgusting Resistance jacket he was so fittingly wearing.

Finn screamed. It was like music to Kylo Ren's ears. He drove in harder, then stepped back; Finn lost his balance, whether from shock or pain; Kylo slashed a wide arc up the man's back, opening leather and flesh in one smooth curve, and Finn dropped like a sack of apples. The silver saber hilt went flying twenty feet and stuck, emitter-first, in a snowdrift.

Kylo Ren stepped back in satisfaction and clipped his saber to his belt, then reached out with the Force to call the saber to him. His destiny. His family's legacy, lying there in the snow.

Except—it didn't budge.

He frowned and tried again. It wiggled, jerked, acted curiously like a piece of metal caught between two magnets—and flew towards him, spinning crazily, nearly hit him in the face, flew— _past_ him? And—

And Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber landed with a firm slap into the outstretched palm of Rey.

Distantly, under the rage and shock and confusion, Kylo was the tiniest bit glad that she looked just as shocked as he did.

Slowly, she brought it up to her shoulder in a careful ready position, and thumbed the emitter.

Blue light soaked the snow, and she looked at him, eyes blazing.

He could see her mind, read the trembling thoughts there. _I—I don't know what's going on, but I am going to do something about it!_

Kylo Ren ignited his own saber again, and she lunged for him, fire in her eyes and a wild yell in her throat.

They fought, whirling and twisting and parrying and stepping through snow and trees, slashing through tree trunks, hissing through snow. Kylo was surprised at how adept she was—she must have some practice with melee weapons.

His side burned in pain. He locked a scream behind his teeth and kept fighting. If he could just get her to stop, even for a moment, he could get her to see things from his side, to listen, to understand.

He found his strength and pushed her back, deeper into the forest, until a massive quake shook the ground and a chasm opened in the earth below their feet. Rey cried out and he forced her to the edge of the brink, sabers locked, hissing, spitting sparks and steam. Her face was so close to his that he could see the sabers reflected in her wide, terrified eyes.

This was it. This was his moment. his chance.

"You need a teacher!" he shouted, straining. "I can show you the ways of the Force!"

"The Force?" she breathed, and blinked for a second, then shut her eyes, as if in a trance. Kylo held his position, bearing down on her.

He felt—

The Force. It was gathering. To _her._ Calling to _her._ Surrounding her, filling her—

Just as he belatedly thought, _this is probably not where I should be standing right now,_ she opened her eyes and slammed into him with all the force her small, lithe body could muster, ramming against his blade with hers, pushing _him_ back, into the snow, into the woods.

Kylo felt searing pain in his other shoulder, and as he staggered back, strength draining from him, Rey swung at him with her saber. He caught her wrist reflexively as she caught his, and there they were locked in an almost-embrace, arms outstretched, sabers humming at both ends.

Rey was forcing his hand down, down, inexorably. She was close enough to kiss--Kylo drove that insane though from his mind and tried to summon enough strength to overpower her, but it was too late.

He stumbled. She slashed at his robes, his saber—shorn neatly in two, it went flying—and then in a bright diagonal arc with the very tip, she opened his robe, his shoulder, and his face from right cheek to left forehead, across the bridge of his nose.

He staggered backward and collapsed in the snow, gasping for air, his eyes wet. The burning agony was nothing compared to the way she was looking at him.

But she paused, her eyes suddenly uncertain, and swallowed, and stepped back—and the earth shook again, another chasm opening between them, fire and earth straight down for a hundred miles, separating them by hundreds of feet. Rey stared at him from very far away, nothing but a blue light and a small dusky shape, then she extinguished the saber and was gone.

"No," he croaked, scrabbling at the snow. "Rey."

_It's not fair—I killed my father—I deserve at least this in recompense, don't I? Is there no sense of fairness in the Force? No justice in the galaxy?_

"Come back. Come back!"

 

The driving snow and howling wind stole his words away. Under him, the planet shook and trembled, promising a quick death.

_Come back._

~

General Hux found him lying face down in the snow, snow packed into his burns, shaking like a leaf. "Snoke sent me to find you," he said, and rolled him over. His distaste and shock at the wound was practically palpable. "Can you stand?"

"Yes, of course," said Kylo faintly, then promptly lost consciousness. Hux dragged him by the shoulders to the snowspeeder and from there to the waiting shuttle. They had minutes before the planet gave way to the sun burning underneath its crust. Hux cursed under his breath as he dragged Kylo inside to the medical bay and barked orders to the pilot to take off already; couldn't she see that they were about to be incinerated?

"Yes, General," she said quickly, and lifted off. They had just cleared the damage radius when the entire planet blew and the sun lit up the interior of the shuttle.

"Shields up. We're going here." Hux handed the navigator a set of coordinates and went back to the medical bay.

In the medical bay, which was really one cot with a large aid kit underneath it, Kylo Ren was semiconscious and muttering. "Hux. Hux, the sun is back."

"Yes, Ren. The sun is back." Hux sat down, unable to feel strictly impersonal about the entire thing, and opened a sterile bandage.

"I want…the girl." Kylo's eyes were glassy and unfocused. The sharp smell of bacta filled the bay as Hux laid the wet cloth over his cheek and nose. Kylo hissed a little, but didn’t have the strength to push back.

"We will find her," Hux reassured. "Snoke will want her alive."

"To hell with Snoke," snarled Kylo with sudden vitriol, and lurched upright, grabbing Hux by the arm to support himself. His fingers were like iron. "I want her. _I_ _want her_. Do you understand?"

Hux felt cold. He told himself it was just the climate control—the system was notoriously finicky on these shuttles. "Yes. My orders, however, are to bring you to Snoke. He told me it was time for you to complete your training."

The change in Kylo's demeanor was startling. He went deadly pale and sank back down to the bench. "I see. Of course. Well, then. Forget the girl. Unless Snoke decrees we find her, of course."

"You're ill and clearly talking nonsense," said Hux, and pulled open Kylo's torn tunic to dab at his shoulder and neck with another bacta-soaked bandage. "Your burns are bad, but sealed. They shouldn't get infected."

Kylo answered with a noncommittal grunt, and Hux pushed the hair off his neck to dab at a smaller burn on his neck--a small, round, reddish mark.

It...wasn't a burn.

Kylo flushed, two high spots of color on his cheeks, and stared daggers at Hux.

"So it's like that, is it," Hux said very delicately after finishing tending to his shoulder.

"Yes. It's like that." Kylo's fist clenched under the table.

There was a short, awkward silence.

"How was she? Feisty little thing, I'll bet—" Hux tried, aiming for some kind of joviality, and suddenly an invisible hand was over his mouth, his nose his only way to breathe. He clawed at his face in shock.

"I suggest you never speak of her like that again," Kylo said in a low, calm voice; his eyes blazing in his white face, "if you enjoy being able to breathe."

The pressure released, and Hux gasped for air. "I—apologies," he choked, when he could speak, and stood up, dizzy. "I'll just—leave you here, then. Alert the bridge if you need me."

"Go," Kylo said, and once he was alone, busied himself meditating on the cot, reaching out, looking, searching.

He would find her. He would make it right, do it correctly this time. He would not have the distraction of his father to make him —

His father.

Kylo Ren hunched over, gripped the edge of the cot so that the metal bit into his palm, and welcomed the pain. It would make him stronger, keep him upright, keep him going, distract him from the thoughts that belonged to Ben Solo.

Rey. The girl. He would ignore everything until he found her again.

Reaching out through the Force, he sent a message toward the vague, lone spark of consciousness he saw there: _I am coming for you. Do not be afraid. It will be all right. I will make it right._

~

Far away, on a distant planet, Rey jerked out of her meditative trance and sat up, sweating.

"He is coming for me."

"Then you must be prepared," said Luke Skywalker, looking at her from across the small stone room. "If Kylo Ren is coming here, all you can do is prepare. You have time to do so--you wounded him, and he must recover his strength before he faces you in battle again."

"We could run." She's embarrassed to suggest it. It's only her first day of training and here she is contradicting her master—and not just her master, but _Luke Skywalker_. "We have the Falcon, we could go—"

"You cannot run from destiny, Rey," he said gently. "You must meet it as an old friend. The Force will be with you."

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Show me how to prepare."

Luke sat down across from her and mirrored her pose. "Feel the Force. It binds you, shows you the way, supports you."

"I see nothing," she said.

"I see much," he said. "You will meet him alone. He will try to sway you."

"To the dark side?" she blurted out.

"It's not clear." Luke opened his eyes. "Rey, when a Skywalker is born, the Force rolls a chance cube, and the galaxy holds its breath to see on what color it falls. Greatness and light….or darkness and chaos." His beard twitched a little. "But sometimes the chance cube is in shades of gray, and hard to determine what the outcome will be."

"You're saying Kylo is like that?"

"It may be." Luke closed his eyes again. "Meditate on it. Breathe. You will construct a new lightsaber with which to defend yourself, if need be."

"But I thought the crystal caves on Ilum were destroyed in the Clone Wars, years and years ago," she said.

"They were. I obtained these a long time ago." Luke dug into a pouch and removed a wrapped cloth, then spread it out carefully on the floor of their hut. Sparkling crystals, clear and green and blue and yellow in the lamplight, met her wondering eyes. "You will choose one. It will call to you. You will build your saber around it, as I did mine. You will be prepared, and you will not fail. This I am sure of."

Rey took a deep breath, and looked up at him, feeling like she finally belonged somewhere. "Thank you, Master," she said with the most heartfelt tone she could muster, and by the look in his eyes she knew he felt her gratitude.

He turned away. "Let's get to work," was all he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that one line is a spin on GRRM's line about the Targaryens. I see a lot of parallels with the Skywalkers and with the Targaryens, mostly that the women kick ass and the men are useless ah ha ha


	3. Instituting

"You have failed me again, Kylo Ren," said the deep, rumbling voice of Supreme Leader Snoke.

Kylo Ren knelt on the cold, damp stone and tried to stay calm. "I--I have killed Han Solo, my lord. It was him or the girl, and I could not do both."

"I see." Snoke shifted on his seat, stroking one finger against the ruin of his alabaster chin. "That is true. At the very least, you have proven yourself a dedicated disciple."

"He meant nothing to me," Kylo said as blandly as he could. "He would have been nothing but a nuisance to the First Order. It was nothing but duty and necessity to kill him."

"Mmm." Snoke was silent for a moment. "Perhaps you have not wholly failed. You have healed from the wounds the scavenger gave you. You will complete your training and undergo the trials I set before you."

"Yes, my master." Kylo raised himself up, bowed, then walked out of the chamber after Snoke waved a dismissive hand.

Perhaps he could pull this off after all. Go through the trials, whatever they were; then go find Rey and get her far, far away from here.

The minute he stepped foot outside, he was attacked. Five Knights of Ren at once converged on him, and he was unarmed, useless--a staff hit a blow in his gut and he keeled over, collapsed on the floor. Everything went dark.

He woke in a dark, sealed room. No doors, no windows. A probing with the Force revealed nothing, no hidden doors or secret locks. Panic began to set in. Kylo paced, gliding his hands along the stone. What was he supposed to do? Was this his trial?

Then, lights and shrieking sirens and bells erupted into a cacophony of chaos, and Kylo understood, even as he cowered against the wall, shielding his head from the onslaught of noise.

These were his trials. And Snoke meant to break him.

~

"It's not working," Rey said, frustrated, and rubbed her temples with the hand that wasn't holding the hilt of her new saber. "What did I do wrong?"

Luke stroked his beard. "Open it again and see."

"I've opened it five times!" Rey slammed her lightsaber onto the table and tried to not get angry. "It's not working. Maybe I chose the wrong crystal."

"Rey. Find your center. Be calm." Luke didn’t move.

She took a deep breath and sat back down, focusing on the panels of the hilt. It slid apart easily, revealing the pale crystal within in its housing.

"Focus. Find the problem. Fix it." Luke closed his eyes and fell into mediation.

Rey sighed as loudly as she dared. Why had she even agreed to stay here? All she did all day was meditate and tinker with this lightsaber that didn't work and spar with Luke using a couple of sticks..  All Luke did was meditate all day, stopping only to spout off random wise buzzwords and go back to meditating. If Kylo Ren was coming for her, she had to be ready, and it looked like all he wanted her to do was build a lightsaber.

"I know you're frustrated," Luke said, and Rey bit the inside of her cheek. "I am trying to teach you patience."

"I _am_ patient," she protested, and glared balefully at her lightsaber. "Did you have trouble when you built yours?"

"Somewhat." Luke smiled a little.

"How long do we have before he finds us?"

"A while. There is a disturbance in the Force. Have you felt it?" Luke looked troubled.

"I had a bad dream last night, if that's what you mean."

"I know. I saw you. You were sleepwalking. Do you remember the dream?"

"I was?" Rey was intrigued.

"Yes. What was your dream?"

"I saw—well, I don't remember, really. It was more unsettling than bad. A dark room is all I really remember."

Luke looked at her, his blue eyes keen. "Mmm."

"What was I doing when I was sleepwalking?"

"I think you should focus on your lightsaber and ask me that later," he said, and fell back into heavy meditation.

(He didn't tell her that he'd woken up in the dim moonlight and seen her floating two feet off the ground, every loose rock, stone, and pebble in the area floating _with_ her like an asteroid belt around a planet.)

"Yes, Master," she said dutifully, and went back to poking at the inner workings of her lightsaber.

~

_Pain. Pain. Make it stop. Anything._

He couldn't remember how long he'd been here, strapped naked to an interrogation table while a Knight laid his skin open with a red-hot, cord-thin whip designed for pain.

"You are no one," intoned a mechanical voice, and the whip bore down again and again.

He was familiar with the routine now. Torment, a quick dip in a bacta tank to heal all external wounds, and then back to the dark room with the screaming lights and noises until his senses overloaded and he clawed at the walls like an animal. Then the daily tube of protein and water. Then, back to the torture.

And all the while, the voice would drag on and on and on, saying, _You are no one. You are no one._

He knew it was supposed to break him down, make him malleable, make him the perfect, complete Sith Lord he was supposed to be. _There is no power without pain. There is no gain without sacrifice._ He wished his will and body were weaker, so that it might be over sooner. He wanted to be perfect. He wanted—he—

A vision swam before his eyes; a girl, dark-haired, dressed in gray, hair tied back in three familiar knots. She was tinkering with something at a table.

"Rey," he gasped, and she _saw_ him, eyes wide, pink mouth open. "Rey."

"Kylo Ren," said a voice, horribly close. He remembered that that was his name, and looked up. His vision swam. For all he knew, the person addressing him was his grandfather. "Supreme Leader Snoke has called for you."

He was dragged to Snoke's chambers in a black cloak and nothing else, dumped in front of the chair and left like a sack of unwanted parts.

"Kylo Ren," said Snoke, from a long way away, and Kylo couldn't focus enough to protect his thoughts. If Snoke tried to read him, he would see—traitor, the girl, the plan—

 _He can't be allowed to know,_ Kylo resolved with his last shred of will, and reached out. The Force was there, waiting, thrumming and alive. He held fast and let it flow through him, focusing, letting pain ease from his body and life leach back into his bones.

Snoke felt it. He heard the shift and felt the faint surprise from the Supreme Leader. "I sensed something from you I have not sensed since you began your trials three weeks ago. You thought of the scavenger."

Kylo Ren rolled onto his knees and held himself up with his shaking arms. The Force was there, but it couldn't be used for everything. "I want to bring her to you, Master," he rasped, his voice gone raw from weeks of screaming. "I want to make right what wrong I have done."

"You will," said Snoke, and leaned over, huge and foreboding in the twilight. "Oh, you will."

~

"I saw him. Master, I saw him!" Rey felt like her heart would beat out of her chest, flying around an outcropping and coming upon Luke, who was meditating as usual. "Kylo Ren—he's suffering."

"I felt it too, Rey," Luke said. "Be calm. Your emotions betray you."

Rey was too upset to obey. She sat on a stone and put her head in her hands. She didn't know what to think—he'd kidnapped her, terrified her, killed Han Solo; but he'd also been gentle, given her water, given her food. "What do we do?"

"We do as we are doing. We train, and wait." Luke looked impassive.

"They're killing him," she exclaimed. "You can't—I can't—just sit by and watch."

"Why not?" asked Luke, opening one eye.

"Because—he—I—" Rey chewed on her lip and didn't finish the sentence.

Luke sighed. "Your thoughts are turbulent, Rey. Your compassion is a good thing; but in the hands of an enemy, it can be used against you. Be at peace. Learn to let go."

"Yes, Master," she said dully, and sank into a cross-legged position, closing her eyes and letting the Force flow through her once again.

~

He'd been allowed an hour of no pain after the encounter in Snoke's chambers. Huddled on the floor, covered in only the black cloak, Kylo Ren reached out with the Force and tried to find her spark, searching, searching.

He found her. She was sitting under a tree, mind open, unguarded, shining with the Force.

 _Rey,_ he whispered through the Force, and she knew he was there. A curious light touch glided over his consciousness, tapping, testing.

 _You're hurt?_ There was slight caution, high suspicion, concern, and a twinge of fear in the question, all mixed in.

 _No._ He stubbornly wrapped the cloak tighter. It was too cold in this cell. 

 _I saw you. You're coming for me._ Apprehension rose in her, strong enough to make his heart race.

 _Yes. I am._ He had no strength to explain. _You must trust me._

 _Trust you?_ The connection between then shook, wavered. _Trust you? You killed him! You monster! Trust you?_

Kylo scrambled for purchase in the Force and sent a wave of feebly desperate reassurance towards her psyche. _Please. Rey. Listen._

 _No. I will not listen to you. You tricked me and made me feel—you—you lied to me._ Indignation. Fury. Righteous fury, even.

 _Rey._ He couldn't summon even the strength to speak. He was losing the connection. How long had it been since he had eaten? He couldn't remember.

 _Kylo?_ The texture of uncertainly colored her message. _Are you there?_

 _Rey._ She was still there. Like a bright, glowing ember, she filled the darkness. He could be content with that, he thought. To know that she was there, to see her light. To know that he had touched her, and she had once let him past her guard and into—

A shockingly tender touch caressed his temple. _You **are** hurt,_ she said. _I can see you._

He couldn't summon words anymore. The only things left in his weakened body were a lump in his throat and wracking guilt in his chest.

She must have sensed it, because the invisible touch slid to his chest, warm and inviting. _You're like a cloud, a shape I can't see. Can—_ she was tentative, confused – _can I help at all?_

Kylo Ren closed his eyes and thought, _Stay._

Rey's consciousness moved over him, the impression of being looked at so strong that he felt the desire to cover himself even more closely with the cloak. _All right,_ she said, and Kylo fell into a dismal sleep, warmed by her presence and the closeness of her mind.

~

"You look tired," Luke observed as Rey poked through the inside of her lightsaber over breakfast.

"I didn't sleep well," she said.

"More dreams?"

"Yes," she said shortly, and picked at a wire. She let out a sigh, and looked at Luke. "Can the Force be used to lie to people?"

He blinked. "Yes," he said. "Visions can be projected by a skilled Force user to manipulate someone into doing something they shouldn't, to set a trap."

"How do you know it's a trap?"

"You don't." Luke chewed on his bread. "You must not allow yourself to be seduced by the dark side of the Force; to allow yourself to be ruled by your emotions instead of your reason. You have great power, Rey. That power in the wrong hands could be deadly."

"I saw Kylo Ren," she admitted. "He was weak, and suffering."

"Did he ask for rescue? He may try to play on your compassion."

"No."

"No?"

"No. He told me he was coming to get me, told me to trust him, and then asked me to stay. It was like—like a link in the Force, like we were looking at each other through a cloudy glass. I could barely see him." Rey linked a wire into another one and soldered them together. "He was very weak."

Luke didn't say anything for a minute. "Be on your guard. He may be trying to throw you off."

Rey closed up her saber hilt after a final check and pressed the emitter. The mouth sputtered, flashed green and blue, and then died. "It was working! It was so close!" she cried, and took it apart again, renewed excitement. "Did you see?"

"I did. Well done. You're growing closer every day." Luke smiled and stood. "I will go meditate on Kylo Ren. Keep working."

"Yes, Master," she said, and bent to her task once more.

~

Three nights later, he came to her.

Rey was dreaming of a meadow, a grassy plain dotted with wildflowers. There was no desert, no sand. Somewhere, a brook was trickling.

"Rey," said a voice, and she turned to see him, striding across the plain to her.

Fear and panic filled her, and she fell, turned, crawled away in terror. "No!" she cried. "No!"

"Don't be afraid," he said, silky and smooth; and then he was on top of her, kissing, pulling at her clothes, and she was kissing him back. She couldn't remember why she had been afraid in the first place. It was only him, only Kylo, only—

He pulled away, and she saw the burning gash across his face she'd left there in the snow. Horror filled her, and she kicked him away. "Look at what you did," he whispered, and the skin on his face bubbled and cracked, peeled off his bones. She screamed and turned to run, but he was lying in the snow, battered and beaten, his clothes torn open and his face bleeding and raw. "Help me," he pleaded, and she stood stock-still, her heart pounding.

The earth opened beneath her feet—she had waited too long, and she was falling, falling into the core of the earth, falling—

Rey jerked awake with a scream and registered that her lightsaber was in her hands. Only half-aware she was doing it, she slammed her thumb down on the emitter.

A meter-long beam of pale green light streamed out of the emitter with a buzz and lit the room with an ethereal glow, showing Luke's craggy face near hers, his eyes wide.

There was an awed silence.

"I did it," she said, trembling. "Master, I _did it_."

"You certainly have," he said. "I heard you cry out and I came to see you, and you were holding it as if in a trance. You were using the Force. The parts were falling into place."

"I—" she began, and then realized there was nothing to say.

"You were troubled," he said. "What did you see?"

"It was a nightmare. Not a vision, just a dream." Rey felt hotly alive, her blade humming in her hands, sweat drying on her back and chest. "My dreams won't scare me now, Master. I've completed my lightsaber."

"So you have." Luke looked lost in thought. "Come. Let us spar. You nearly bested me last time."

"Now? It's the middle of the night!"

"And you are awake and so am I. Night, day, it does not matter. Come."

"And it wasn't _nearly_ , I let you win," she added as she followed him out of the hut.

"Oh, that's what you think," he said lightly, and smiled. "You must be faster, quicker. A heavy blow takes too much time to build up to. You are not fighting with a staff. Remember the steps."

"Yes, Master," she said, and fell into a ready stance, her blade held out.

He sprang toward her with surprising agility, and a sky-colored blade met her jade one with a hum and crackle of ozone.

~

On a nameless planet systems away, a man opened his eyes.

"Who are you?" asked a low, gravelly voice.

"I am no one," he said.

"You are Kylo Ren. I am Supreme Leader Snoke. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Kylo Ren blinked and saw the looming, huge face of Snoke. He blinked. It felt like someone was in his head, looking at his thoughts. He wondered vaguely if that was a good thing, before the doubtful thought was whisked away from his mind and he was left blank as snow.

"You are my servant. I am your master. You obey me. You follow me."

"Yes, Master," he echoed. 

"You will take a ship and go alone to the Ahch-To system, where we have tracked the ship called the Millennium Falcon.There, you will find a Jedi called Skywalker and a girl called Rey. You will kill Skywalker and bring the girl to me, alive. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master," he said.

"Go, Kylo Ren. Do not fail me." Snoke leaned down--there was something in the palm of his hand. "The girl, Rey, is strong. She will try to lead you astray. You will need this."

It was a-- _his_ \--lightsaber. Someone had repaired it. He lifted it and pressed the emitter, and a crackling beam of red and orange energy shot out, sparking. It was familiar, unlike so many other things, and brought back memories of--

 _Rey. I know that name. I--_ and the thought was pulled away, soft and clean as a blanket being pulled off a bed. It wasn't important, he decided. Nothing was as important as this mission. He would complete it. He would bring her back.

"Thank you, my master."

In the hangar, he selected a small craft he felt was suitable for his mission and settled in for his flight, keying in the coordinates and setting it on autopilot. A strange memory nagged at his mind-- _Snoke is using you for your power--he'll crush you--_ but he couldn't remember who had said it, or when. He pushed it away, willing it to disappear. It was not important. 

This would be a simple task, he decided. It would not take long. 

The engines burned into life and lifted the black, gleaming hull of the ship up and away. Only a streak of blue marked when it hit hyperspace, and then nothing marked its passage but the silent chill of the blackness of space.


	4. Relinquishing

"You have learned well," said Luke with a warm smile as he and Rey deactivated their lightsabers. It had been a long, long day of practicing in the wide yard outside Luke's hut, and both of them were exhausted.

"It's no staff, but it'll do," Rey fired back with a grin. "What do we do now?"

"Now?" Luke stretched. "We wash and eat." He sniffed the air. "And then stay inside, I think. There's a storm on the way, and you don't need to be Force-sensitive to see that coming."

"A storm?" Rey was puzzled. "It's been beautiful almost every day here. Damp, but—"

"They come in often during the end of Ahch-To's summers." Luke made his way inside the hut and she followed. "It's a side effect, you see, of living on a planet that's mostly ocean. Winds and currents make for terrible storms."

"The only storms I've ever seen are sandstorms." Rey went over to the basin and washed her face and neck. "How bad will this one get?"

"Very strong. Strong enough to blow the hut to pieces if we're not careful." Luke prepared dinner while Rey scrubbed the dirt out of both their lightsabers. She'd dropped hers twice and knocked his out of his hand. "I suggest we reinforce the roof, maybe the beams as well. Another layer of stonework."

"Can we use the Force to do it?" she asked, eager. "I bet I could put up an entire wall in less than ten minutes."

He chuckled. "No, Rey. We will use our hands. The Force will guide us. Some things are worth getting your hands dirty for."

"Oh." She continued to pick at a pebble wedged between the handgrip and the stock of Luke's saber. "We don't have any tools for building."

"Which is why I am going to Terrin, for supplies." Luke took the pot off the stove. "Dinner is ready."

"You're going to Terrin? The port? But that's on the other side of the planet. How are we going to get there? We don't have a ship."

"I said I am going, not we. You will stay here and meditate. I will take the boat that I built for errands such as this, and sail to Terrin." Luke sat down at the low table. "Why are you looking at me like I have three heads, Rey?"

"I didn't know you had a boat," she muttered, and sat down.

"You never asked," he said pointedly, and they ate in silence.

After they finished eating, Rey asked, "How long will you be gone?"

"Not more than a week. I should be back before the storm hits. Don't worry."

"It's not the storm I'm worried about," she said nervously.

"Ah. Kylo Ren, is it?" Luke set his cup down and looked at her. "He won't come here in the worst weather season of the year—he has far more sense than that—and he certainly won't take his chances landing in the middle of a hurricane. If he does manage to land and find you, I have the utmost faith that you will be able to defeat him, as you did on Starkiller Base."

"What if I can't?" she said. "He was wounded then, and weak—"

"And now you are stronger than you have ever been," he reminded her. "Meditate. Let the Force guide you, and you will not fail."

"Yes, Master," she said, and tried her hardest to feel unafraid.

~

Two days later, Luke left for Terrin on his boat, unmooring the thing and drifting out to sea, guided only by the Force and the wind.

Rey watched him go from high on the mountain and felt her heart sink down into her belly as he disappeared into a speck, and then nothing, on the horizon.

She tried to meditate after he left, but after a few hours, her concentration broke and she paced back and forth, muttering, jumping at every noise. Her lightsaber hung at her belt and she fingered the thing often, nervous. It was reassuring to have the weapon at her side (and her staff was safely ensconced inside the hut) but her heart would not stop thumping.

Out to the east, she saw the smallest hint of darkness.

By the morning, the clouds were rolling in, thick and black.

 _Master Luke was wrong_ , Rey thought, shocked, as the rain started to fall and she shoved up loose stones against the walls, soaked to the skin in cold rain, her teeth chattering. _The storm is here too soon! How could he have made this mistake?_

The wind had picked up—it was whipping at her hair, her cheeks, her wet clothes. She might be able to take refuge in the Falcon, if all else failed. That thought lightened her heart a good deal. She might even be able to fly the thing above the storm and wait it out.

Deciding her odds of navigating the steep stone steps down to the bay where the Falcon was docked were better now than never, Rey rushed inside, packed a bag of necessities, grabbed her staff, and hitched her saber to her belt. Taking one of Luke's robes, she threw it on to protect from the rain, and then began her long trek back down the mountain to the ship.

It was rough going. She stumbled more than once, caught herself with the staff, and kept walking. The stone was slippery with rain and the gusts of wind threatened to blow her off the stairs.

Rey finally made it to the empty ship, still sitting where she'd left it. Relief blew over her. She unlocked the ramp—

A shadow swept over her.

She looked up. It was a ship: a small, jet-black shuttle, shining with rain, keeling crazily in the wind. As she watched in mute shock, it turned and opened its landing gear, settling down on the flat patch of land she knew was just beyond the outcropping of rock it was sinking behind.

Rey bolted. The Falcon was a dead giveaway to their location—how could they have been so stupid? _He's not supposed to be here! Luke said so! He wouldn't come in the storm!_

Except—he _had_ come, so Rey supposed it didn't matter whether or not Luke was wrong or right. Kylo Ren was here. Anything before that didn't matter.

Halfway up the first flight of stairs, the sensation of being seen hit her so strongly she looked behind her.

 _Rey. The girl._ The words were devoid of emotion, almost robotic. _You will come to me._ They echoed through her, but there was no real conviction behind them.

 _I will not!_ She threw the words back, scrambling up the slick steps, aided by the Force. Her defiant tone seemed to awaken something in him.

_You will! My orders are to take you alive. Do not make me disobey my master._

Rey shut him out and kept climbing. She made it to the first ledge and turned, clutching her staff, waiting. There was no point in leading him further, if he could find her. Something was off in the way he was speaking, his attitude. His very presence in the Force was _wrong._

The wind whipped harder. Her hair was getting in her eyes; it was hard to see through the rain. She waited, her heart pounding.

 _I must be calm,_ she remembered, and slowly closed her eyes, slid to her knees, and opened her mind to the Force. It flowed through her like a river, filling every part of her consciousness—

And warned her when he stepped up the top step and stood, staring at her in the rain.

She didn't open her eyes. "Hello," she said.

"You," he said. "You're coming with me."

"I am not," she said calmly, and felt his irritation ripple through the Force. "I am staying here. You can fight me if you like. It will end the same way the last one did."

"You're trying to trick me," he snapped, and she sensed—confusion? Why was he confused?

Rey opened her eyes.

Kylo Ren was standing on the brink of the stair, his black clothes the same as ever, his black hair wet and stringy against his pale long face. A pink burn scar stretched from his right jaw to his left eyebrow, and his eyes were curiously blank. He wasn't holding his lightsaber. Maybe it was still broken—although she couldn't imagine him setting off to come after her unarmed.

"Kylo?" she ventured, thoroughly confused herself.

He jerked upright at the sound of her voice and before she knew what was happening the Force was dragging her by the throat though the air and to his hand and no, no; _that_ was not going to happen. She whipped her staff to her center and gave him a good whack across the face as the momentum propelled her forward.

He stumbled and lost his connection to the Force. She smashed into him and they both toppled over the edge of the stairs, falling in a tumble of legs and cloth and wet hair and Rey's staff, down and down and down.

 _This was not a good idea,_ she heard him think in distress, and then with a loud _whack_ she heard something hit the corner of a step and he _screamed,_ she could sense his pain and shock through the Force, and they both pitched up against a wall.

"Kylo!" she yelled, rain still pouring down. She disentangled herself from the wet mess of robes and stood up.

He dragged himself upright, white as a sheet, his left arm dangling at his side. "You," he hissed, and whipped out the saber with his other hand. The red, unstable blade crackled to life.

Ah. Well, there was something familiar, at last.

Rey flipped the switch on her staff and the ends crackled as the electric field she'd installed over the past week lit up. "Me," she said.

"I'm not supposed to kill you!" he shrieked at her over the roar of the wind. "Can’t you understand that?"

"You're not making any sense!" she yelled back, utterly frustrated. "Either fight me or kill me or leave me alone! Haven’t you done enough damage already?"

He sprang toward her, and she took advantage of his momentary lack of caution to slam into his mind with the Force and saw—

Nothing.

His lightsaber fizzed and hissed against the end of her staff, and she held him there.

There were no thoughts about her inside his head at all. The only thing in his immediate consciousness was the agony of his arm and his orders from—Snoke? Snoke. Rey's stomach turned.

"You don't know me," she said.

"You're a scavenger." He sounded less sure, but pressed against her harder. "I know you're in there. Get out of my head."

"Snoke is making you do this, isn't he?" She shifted and he turned, whirling down and slamming against her staff again and again as she tried to reason with him. "Kylo! It's Snoke! You don't—have to—"

"Liar!" He lifted her bodily with the Force, rage and terror rising in him, and slammed her against the cliff.

She let him do it and crumpled into a heap of sodden cloth in the rain, hoping Snoke's apparent orders about keeping her alive would register with Kylo before she was, in fact, seriously injured.

It worked. Kylo Ren dropped his saber and raced over, gasping. "No, no, no. I cannot fail my master, I cannot fail my master, no, no—"

She opened her eyes and slammed him in the chest with the end of her charged staff. He went flying forty feet and fetched up against the stairs. "I don't want to kill you, Kylo," she shouted over the wind. "But if I have to, I will."

He flung his hand out and his saber hilt sprang to it. "Don't make me fail my master," he gasped, blood streaming from somewhere under his mop of hair. Rain and blood mingled on his face in a gruesome patina, his eyes wild.

"You have to fight him," she insisted. "Fight, Kylo!"

"I'll fight _you!_ " he screamed, and ignited his saber again, rain hissing down on the blade and smoking.

"You'll try," she called out, and whipped her staff into a mocking salute. "So try."

He sprang at her again, slashing and hacking down one-handed. She could sense his growing exhaustion and pain as he kept coming at her. She deflected again and again, slamming her staff into his saber .

As they neared the steps, she sprang up them for higher ground, and he followed her up. The wind pulled at them both, the rain in their eyes. Rey got in a good hit to his side with the staff. Kylo jerked backwards, swinging wildly with his lightsaber—Rey stepped forward to attack, misjudged her footing, and slipped. She went down hard with a shocked cry on the steps and his saber sliced through her staff, between her hands.

The ends fizzled and went out, the power lost. He pointed his saber at her throat, leaning against the rock wall, panting, eyes wild with victory. "You will come with me," he gasped, his feet barely keeping him standing. Even as he spoke, his boots faltered and slipped. He went down to one knee, still keeping his saber steady. "You'll come with me now. There's nowhere else for you to go. Nothing else to fight with."

Rey threw off Luke's cloak and unhooked her saber off her belt, igniting it. The wet rocks gleamed with jade-green light, clashing against the red of Kylo's. "You're weak and injured," she said, keeping her saber at guard. "Kylo. Let me help you."

He wavered. She felt it in the Force. A memory was there, weak but there—she saw herself tying her hair back, _do we have to go?_ She saw herself secured to the interrogation chair on Starkiller Base and she—Kylo?—tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, being careful so as not to wake her.

"You remember me," she shouted. "Kylo. I see it. I know you remember."

"I have to bring you to Snoke," he gasped, and dropped to his other knee. He was fading fast, she saw.

"If you're going to do that you'd better get on your feet, then." If she couldn't reason with him, she could wear him out. She saluted with the saber, her hair stuck to her face. "Come now. Stand up."

He staggered, lurched to his feet; his face white as bone. "You won't kill me," he said. "You didn't before and you won't now."

She dashed forward and sliced at his robes, then deflected his halfhearted blow and returned to her place. A chunk of black fabric fell to the wet ground, smoking in a puddle. "Don't place your bets so surely," she called. "If you won't stand down, I will hurt you."

He bared his teeth and slashed at her, summoning all his strength for one last attack. She deflected, turned, parried, and slashed back, driving him back and leading him further up the steps. Her own arms and legs were aching, and she was cold and wet and miserable, but she had to get him to Luke's hut. If she wounded him, she could not carry him up the stairs. Better to get him somewhere safer and then deal the final blow.

They finally crested the ridge at the very top, and the wind hit her like a ton of scrap. She staggered sideways, righted herself with the Force, and turned to face him.

He came over the ridge, face drawn, still bleeding, inexorable. The saber crackled as he swung it through the rain and pointed it at her. "I am not…done…yet," he rasped. "You're mine. Mine."

"I'm not yours or anyone's," she said. "Let's be done with this."

"I agree," he snarled, and raised his arm over his head to bring it down on her—

Rey darted forward, quick as a snake, and her green blade bit into his unguarded side and his thigh before he cried out in pain and she whirled away. "Please don't make this worse," she shouted.

"You little _minx,_ " he bellowed, and brought his arm over to cross his chest, gearing up for a horizontal slash. Her blade found his right shoulder, slashed at it. He screamed and dropped his saber, falling to his knees, both arms limp.

Rey reached out with the Force and called his saber to her. It flew into her hand and she looked at it. Pitiful. Someone had taken a soldering tool and just fused the two halves back together. A shoddy job for a shoddy—

A terrible noise interrupted her musing. Kylo was hysterical. There was no other word for it. He was rocking back and forth on his knees, head down, howling, wailing, crying into the rain. "Just kill me!" he screamed as she got closer. He raised his head. "Just do it!"

She crouched down and wiped rain out of her eyes. "I'm not going to kill you," she informed him.

"Then you truly are unmerciful," he spat. "My master—I have failed—"

Rey reached out and touched his bloody forehead with her two fingers, and reached out with the Force at the same time.

His entire inner being was in turmoil, she saw. He was _remembering_ —being away from Snoke was deteriorating his mental state and cutting his memories loose. And she saw—

The Force—

It was like a reverse mind trick. Or perhaps a mind trick itself, that someone--Snoke--had done to him. All of Kylo's memories of her were walled up, behind a barrier—but it was being chipped at, broken, and the memories were coming back.

He was panicking, confused, hurt and terrified and sure of only one thing, of his greatest fear; that he had failed.

"Oh, Kylo," she said, pity in her voice, and did the only thing she could do--reached out with the Force to take his consciousness, as he had done to her so long ago.

Kylo Ren collapsed forward into her arms like a sack of wet cement. She rolled him over and dragged him across the muddy ground to the hut, which miraculously was still standing in the wind, snug and warm.

Inside, she put him on the floor and then went for the aid bag that Luke kept under his bunk. She pulled out burn salve and liquid-to-solid skin seal, then started a pot of water to heat on the fire.

"You're more trouble than you're worth," she groused at the unconscious Kylo, laid out on the floor. He, of course, did not answer. She sighed and crouched down by him, trying to figure out how to best remove his robes.

She took his belt off and opened his damaged and burned overcoat, balling it up and lifting his wet head to shove it underneath his neck. His tunic clasped down the front, so she pushed that open, revealing the nasty burn at his waist.

Rey pulled out her small knife and cut away at the fabric at his shoulder, exposing his other burn. She smeared salve on it and the other one, then poked around at his thigh until she found the last one she'd given him, on his upper thigh below his hip.

She opened the front of his pants and tugged them down as gently as she could to his knees, lifting his legs as she went. The thigh burn was a mess, larger than the other two, with charred skin and fabric seared to his flesh. Rey dug around in the med kit for the forceps, keeping her hand on his leg to hold the fabric down.

A ragged gasp tore its way out of Kylo's throat, and he kicked, yelped in pain, grabbed at her with his good hand, and dragged her down on top of him. "You," he growled.

"Let go of me! I'm trying to help you!" Rey gripped at his hand and yanked, struggling. He yanked her back down to his chest, his one-armed grip like iron, and whispered, "I have you now. It's all right. Snoke will make it all right."

"Will you shut the hell up about Snoke?" Rey shoved at his chest, and felt something hard poke her in the thigh. "Oh, of _course._ Unbelievable."

Embarrassment brought some color back into his face, and he faltered, his thoughts swerving away from Snoke and to her. "I—I don't—"

"Well, your body remembers things your mind doesn't, I guess," she snapped, and that startled him enough to let her up. "If you would please—" she glanced down at his groin and flushed—"try to, uh, not do _that_ while I'm administering medical aid, that would be appreciated."

"It's not like I can control when it happens," he said sullenly.

She brandished the forceps. "Well, this is going to hurt, so that might help."

"What? What are y—"

"You have pieces of your robe burned into your skin. If I don't remove them, you'll get an infection."

"You don't have a particle disintegrator?" He was white again.

"Does this look like a bloody city-planet med-center? No, I don't. Hold still and it will be over sooner. I'm sorry."

At the first dig with the forceps, he broke out in sweat. Halfway through, he broke down and started _keening—_ there was no other word for those long, high pitched wailing noises between his teeth punctuated by gasps and sobs. To his credit, he didn't move, and she burned the pieces of robe in the fire.

"I got them all. Done."

"Good." He went limp for a minute while she dabbed the salve on his thigh and applied the breathable liquid sealant. "My arm."

"I was going to ask about that. Sit up, let's have a look."

Kylo sat up and nearly fell over, his right arm out to steady himself. "Oh," he said faintly, as Rey's fingers prodded around the hollow of his pale, freckled shoulder.

"Looks like it's dislocated. You're in luck, I've set loads of joints. Not usually human, but the same principle applies." Rey pursed her lips. "Feels like the joint's been pushed to the top of the socket, so I have to pull it out and back down."

"And how are you planning to do that?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"Easy. You lie down, I put my foot in your armpit, and I pull it out and let it sink back in. Since you're not trying to kidnap me anymore, I hope that means you'll cooperate."

He narrowed his eyes and lowered himself back down flat on the floor. Rey took off her soaked boot, wedged her foot between his arm and side, and grabbed his bicep to maneuver his arm to where she needed it. He shut his eyes and breathed heavily through his nose until she had it settled. "Ready?" she asked.

"I seem to remember the last time I was disrobed and you were there it was a far more pleasant time," he said dryly.

She firmly pulled his arm straight out and let go. There was a sickening squelch as it sank back into the shoulder joint, and Kylo Ren lurched forward and gagged, sick.

"Hold on," she said, and scrambled for an empty basin. She held it under his chin as he retched from the pain, then set it aside and wiped his face clean. "Better?"

"You're being kind to me." He looked vaguely concerned. "Is this a trick?"

"No. Why would I want to trick you?" Rey threw the dirty basin out the door. Let the rain and wind take care of that. "I'm not the one who told me everything would be fine and woke up strapped to a chair."

"I was coming back for you," he said faintly. "I—I was going to steal a shuttle and go away with you."

"Is that why you killed your father?"

He grimaced. "No. I—no. I had to. Snoke wanted a sign of my allegiance. You—you were going to be that sign, until you escaped. The only thing left I could prove anything by was Han Solo."

"Don't you dare blame me for that," she snapped with sudden venom. "Don't you dare."

"I'm not," he said, looking sick. "I'm—I'm not. I'm sorry."

She ignored him and went over to the fire, poking at it. The wind whistled around the hut. "This storm is here early," she said.

"It's me," he said miserably. "Snoke sent me here and the—my—it's the dark side of the Force, it's affecting me. I landed in that like a lunatic. It's affecting the storm."

"Make it stop, then," she said.

"I can't stop the weather. That's like trying to stop a planet from rotating. There are some things the Force can't do." Kylo leaned back, his burned and scarred skin pale gold in the firelight.

"Are you hungry?"

"What?"

"I said, are you hungry? There's stew here left over from last night, it's hot—there's bread too. You look hungry." Rey shrugged.

"I—yes, I am," he said, sounding surprised. "I haven't eaten in—it must be a while."

"That explains your frankly terrible stamina in a fight," she said, and spooned stew into a large plate. She handed it to him. "I promise it's not poisoned," she said, filling her own. "Wild retti—it's sort of a small furry fat thing that lives here—and roots, and some herbs. It's good."

Rey turned around with her full plate and saw that Kylo Ren was too busy eating stew to bother with being picky. She watched, surprised, as he drank as much as he could from the plate, then used his fingers to pick the chunks of meat and mealy white root out and eat those too. When he was done, he upturned the plate and licked it clean.

Her heart tugged. She'd done the same thing so many times, as an always-hungry scavenger on Jakku. How long had it been since he'd eaten?

Kylo looked up. He'd heard her thoughts, then. "I don't remember the last time I ate," he said, sounding vaguely ashamed.

"Here," she said, and handed him a chunk of bread. He devoured that too, and another plate of stew, while she ate her own and watched.

"Do you remember when you heard me that night?" she asked, as he finally set his plate down and leaned against the wall.

"Yes," he said shortly. She didn't need to elaborate.

"Who was hurting you?"

He was silent for a long time. Then, "Snoke," he said quietly. "He was—I thought it was my trials. He wanted to break me and send me to find you."

"He wanted you to fail, then."

"He—he wouldn't." Kylo looked uncomfortable. "He would never send me off to die. He's my master. He taught me everything"

"Are you sure about that?" Rey crossed over to the fire. "I mean, he tortured you, hurt you, made you kill, and starved you. And he's your master? Luke would never do that to me."

Kylo's face was impassive.

She tried again. "I mean, he told you I was an enemy. And here I am feeding you and giving you shelter."

"I don't want to talk about this," he said blandly, and shivered.

Rey knew enough of him to not press the issue. "Let me find you some clothes," she said, and dragged a bundle out from under Luke's bed. "These should fit. Might be short, but they'll work."

"You're still soaked," he reminded her.

"I know. I'll change in a second. Here." She set down the pants and tunic, then took a small vial out of the med-kit. "This is for the swelling in your arm. Hold still." She dabbed it on his skin and he sighed in relief.

"I think I did something to my head, too," he said. "When I fell."

"Yes, you do have some blood there. Hold still." Rey got a cloth wet and dabbed his face clean, then gestured. "Put your head down. I need to see where you're hurt."

Kylo bent his head down, feeling foolish, like he was bowing. Rey gently combed her fingers through his wet hair and touched on the tender, sore cut on the crown of his head. "Found it," she said, as he grimaced. "Looks clean. I'll put some sealant on it, you'll be good as new."

He let her dab the stuff on his head and tilted his head back. "Now what?" he asked, his skin already missing her fingers.

"Now we go to sleep. I don't know about you, but I've had about all the excitement I want for one day."

"Where do you sleep?" he asked, watching her fiddle with her clothing as he shuffled out of his clothes and reached for the pants.

"Outside, when the weather is nice. Inside, when I feel like it." Rey unbuckled her sodden belt and took off her other boot, then stripped out of her jacket. "Like tonight. I feel like not being out in a hurricane."

He chuckled and tied the pants closed, then reached for the wrap tunic, still watching her with a sidelong gaze as she pulled her tunic off—giving him a quick glimpse of her small, perky breasts and firmly toned back—then leaned down and pulled off her pants.

She wasn't wearing underthings.

Kylo Ren's face went hot and he swallowed hard, clenching his good hand into a fist to keep himself under control. It wasn't fair, he thought. His pulse pounded in his ears. The first time—he could write it off as an interrogation technique, could _be_ excused, _I only bedded the girl to gain her trust and get information my lord Snoke,_ there was no excuse here and now for this reaction—utter loyalty to his Master demanded no other dalliance or attachment, not at all—was he—did he—?

"Kylo? Are you all right?"

Rey finished pulling her sleeping tunic over her head and stared at him in concern. He looked strained, focused, glassy-eyed and distant. "Kylo?"

He jerked out of it and looked at her. "I'm fine," he said shortly, and limped over to the bed, wincing at every movement.

She scurried after him. "Your burn, your leg," she said. "You have to uncover it and let it breathe, or it won't heal."

"You expect me to sleep naked and unarmed with _you_ in the room?" he snapped.

"Only if you like having two legs!" she snarled back, hurt, and whirled about to bar the door and shutter everything and hang their wet clothes to dry. He stretched out on the bed and watched her every move, hyperaware of the fact that her thin shift was nearly transparent through the lamplight and he could see every curve, every line. He desperately wanted to touch her, and desperately wanted to run out into the rain until this particular fit of madness passed.

She banked up the fire and came back to the bed, shivering a little. The room was colder now that she'd blown most of the lamps out. "Move over," she demanded.

Cold sweat broke out on his back. "What?"

"I'm not sleeping on the floor of my own home catching my death of cold and damp. Move. Over."

Her tone brooked no argument. He scooted over and she climbed into bed with him, her body warm and firm against his. "Your feet are freezing," he complained.

"Oh, like your hands are better." She set the lamp down on the niche by the head of the bed and pulled the blankets up to her chin. "Wait. Do we have to agree that we won't try to kill each other in our sleep?"

"What? No—I—that's a given. I wouldn't kill you anyway—you're the only person who knows the way down the mountain and I'm not trying it in this storm." Kylo relaxed a little. "Don't be so paranoid."

"Paranoid." She sat up and glared down at him. "You kidnap me, take me in for interrogation, sleep with me, feed me, give me water, and then try to kill me twice, and I have to sleep in a bed with you, and _I'm_ being paranoid."

"What are you trying to say?"

"You're being ridiculous and you're trying to make me feel like an idiot for no reason. Stop it."

"Sorry." Kylo propped himself up on his good arm. "Help me take my pants off?"

"What?!"

"For the burn! The burn, you said—" Kylo went hot all over again. "Just help me, okay? I can't bend in the middle too well."

"Oh." Rey shuffled around and yanked on the bottom of his pants, slipping them off. "Better?"

"Yes." He felt too naked, too unarmed. She lay down next to him and all was quiet for a while. "Rey?"

"What?"

"You can get closer if you're cold. I can feel you shivering."

She didn’t move for a moment, but then scooted closer to him, nestled her body beside his, shoulder to shoulder. "Mmm," she mumbled. "You're warm."

Kylo swallowed again and pulled the blankets over them both. "C'mere," he muttered, and she rolled over on her side, face in his neck, one leg hooked into his. "Better?"

"Mmm," she said. "Yeah. You?"

"I'm all right," he said, and reassured by the solid warmth of her at his side, he drifted off into a deep, solid, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -"I'll Keep You Safe" by Sleeping At Last is my ultimate song for these two and I listened to it at least 40 times while I wrote this chapter.  
> -Don't worry, the good stuff is coming. This was going to be three chapters and now It's gonna be like six, what have I done  
> -KEEP THE COMMENTS COMING I LOVE TALKING TO YOU GUYS!!


	5. Reconciling

Rey opened her eyes before the first light of dawn and shivered. Her feet and hands were freezing—the temperature had dropped considerably during the night and the fire had gone out. She closed her eyes again with a huff, wishing she didn't have to get out of bed. Kylo was warm and solid behind her.

But things had to be done, so she slipped out of bed, wrapped a cloak around herself, and made her way to the fire, poking at the embers and stirring up smoke and ash. The stack of wood by the fire was dry, at least—she was glad she didn't have to trek outside into what was undoubtedly miserable weather to find wood.

Once she got the fire roaring, she went to the window, opened the shutter, and peered out. The yard was sodden and muddy. It was drizzling and bitterly cold in the predawn haze. She sighed and shut it, heading back to the bed.

Kylo was where she'd left him, still asleep. She looked him over. He seemed a little flushed. _He's feverish, maybe the wounds got infected,_ she thought, and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.

At her touch, Kylo's eyes flew open and he grabbed her wrist, forcing her back against the rock wall. "Kylo!" she cried, and struggled.

"You're _mine_ ," he rasped, and she struck him hard across the face. His grip on her released and he caught himself before crashing down into the bed.

"Are you dreaming, or actually trying to kill me?" she demanded, rubbing her wrist. "Because I'd rethink that if I were you."

"I'm—" he winced, reached for his shoulder, and clenched his hand into a fist before it reached his skin. "--fine. Sorry." Kylo took a deep, controlled breath. "Please don't touch me when I'm asleep," he said tightly.

Rey stared at him. "I—all right. Is your shoulder hurting?"

"Leg, too." He lowered himself back down, his jaw working.

"I'll take a look. Do you feel cold?"

He laughed, a short, nasty sound. "Well, it's freezing in here, so yes," he said very slowly, every word dripping with condescension.

"For your information," she snapped, "I built that fire up in the freezing morning and it is _much_ warmer now than it was when I got up."

He glared at her. "Oh, well, so _sorry_. Starkiller Base was warmer than this shack, and it was built on a planet of _snow_."

Rey blinked at him. He was _ungrateful,_ the brat. She'd practically frozen her feet off getting the damned fire going. Ungrateful, selfish, spoiled—

"Outside," she said calmly.

"What?"

"Go. Outside. Now."

His jaw dropped before he caught himself and shut it, looking like a long faced fish. "You can't be serious. You're…not serious. Are—I'm feverish, I'm—I'm practically half-dead—"

Rey stood up and grabbed him by one large ear. He yelped in shock and swatted at her, but she persisted in dragging him to the door, unlatching it, and shoving his lanky frame out into the cold and wet. "Get out!" she screamed. "And don't come back until you've learned some _manners_ like every other life form in the kriffing _galaxy,_ you insufferable brat!"

"Rey!" he yelled, sounding shocked. He pounded on the door. She dragged the table in front of the door, aided by the Force, and sat on it.

Kylo pounded again, and then she heard the wet _squish-squash_ of bare footsteps in mud. He was walking to the northern eaves of the hut, where the roof met the rock face of the cliff. There was a small area of shelter there, under the joint of the roof.

So he was going to wait her out. Fine. She could play that game. Rey hopped off the table and built the fire into a roaring blaze, then warmed up yesterday's breakfast and ate, loudly clinking her fork against the plate. The rain was just wet and heavy enough to soak everything through, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of her inside the hut.

Rey heard him shift against the wall. His anger and discomfort were like a beacon through the Force. _I hate you,_ he said, and she knew he could sense her watching.

 _Should have been more polite,_ she answered. _Mmm, these eggs are delicious._

There was no answer, only stubborn silence. After a few minutes he was back. _You'll see. I'll die out here and then you'll be sorry._

_Oh? Why would I be sorry?_

He floundered, his thoughts breaking up into confusion. She caught memories of them; the battle in the snow, the battle on the stairs. _I—_ he started, and then went quiet.

"Exactly," she muttered, and went about airing out her damp things from the previous day. "Unbelievable. Tries to kill me twice and thinks I want to help him."

Even though, of course, there had been—

 _I see that._ He sounded bitter. _Go away. Stop thinking about that. I don't want to see it._

 _Tough,_ she said back, and briefly wondered if it would be considered in poor taste to really let her imagination run wild for him, maybe even touch herself. He would _hate_ that.

She heard a muffled, furious noise from outside, and decided against it. _Brat,_ she thought, and felt his reaction to that rather strongly. It made her smile.

 _I could destroy that table you have barring the door,_ he said. _I can feel every molecule through the Force. I could obliterate it._

 _But you won't do it,_ she said, and he fell silent.

He lasted another half an hour before tapping on the front door. She waved her hand and moved the table away, unlatching the door and opening it a crack. "Yes?" she asked.

He looked pathetic. His tunic was soaked, his pants were soaked, and his hair was plastered to his forehead. "I'm… sorry that… I was rude," he said in a very miserable voice, shivering. She could sense the self-loathing, the inner anger at being _weak_ fighting with the desire to be warm. "I—please, Rey."

"It's not weakness," she informed him. "It's good manners and being polite and realizing that you did something wrong and fixing it."

He looked away, fixed his eyes on the floor. His inner dialogue muddied back into vague sensation.

"Don't do that," she said, frustrated.

"Get out of my head," he said.

"How am I supposed to help you if I can't see what you're thinking?"

"I didn't ask you to help me!" he snapped. "I didn't ask to be sent here, to try to capture you—"

"No, but you did, and I am. Get inside." Rey opened the door and he stumbled inside and made a beeline straight for the fire. "Take off your clothes. I have dry ones on the bed for after you dry off. Blanket is by the fire."

Kylo shucked off his clothes, shivering, moving clumsily around his wounds, and grabbed for the blanket. Rey averted her eyes from the sight that was his naked backside and took his wet clothes to hang them.

"Oh," Kylo said in a very small voice, huddling into the fire-warm blanket. " _Ohh_."

"You all right?" she asked, turning her head.

"It's so _warm_ ," he said thickly, and buried his face in the scratchy wool. "Thank you, Rey."

"Oh—you're welcome," she said, rather pleased. "I'll dry your hair for you so you don't have to move. Hold on."

"You don't have to do that," he said, head still bent over.

"No, but I want to." She crouched behind him and covered his wet head with a towel, squeezing his hair dry. "Hold still."

A soft sound escaped his lips and he went tense. "Don't," he said weakly, but leaned back into her hands, his back against her knees.

"Don't fall asleep. I'm going to look you over and get some food into you." Rey finished drying his hair into a damp mop and hung that towel up. "Okay, let's see the shoulder."

He let the blanket fall a little, exposing his pale, freckled shoulder and the burn there. It looked slightly swollen under the liquid bandage. Rey frowned.

"Waist," she said, and he leaned back a little and opened the blanket, exposing his waist and his thigh. The burn at his side was fine, healing well. The one on his thigh looked puffy, but not as swollen as the shoulder.

"I might have missed a fragment of something and it's infected," she said slowly. "I'm going to have to dig around in there again."

"You know, I have a particle disintegrator on my shuttle," he said. "It's a standard piece in every First Order med-kit."

"I am not leaving you here to walk a mile down a wet, slippery mountain to get it. And you're in no shape to do it yourself. I'll just use the Force. Hold still."

"You can't use the Force for that," he objected, but did as she said.

Rey sat back and concentrated on his shoulder, her hand on his skin. She could sense the texture, the sense of flesh and burn and the—ah. There it was. A piece of cloth she'd missed, already gathering infection around it. She tugged at it with the Force.

Kylo jerked in pain. "Rey!"

"Shh," she said, and placed both fingers on either side of where she sensed the piece was. "This might hurt. Sorry."

"What—" Kylo's question was broken off by a cry of pain as she _pulled_ and pressed down on the sides at the same time, and the piece of cloth pulled through the burned skin, leaking fluid and a nasty smell.

"Got it," she said. "Sorry." She dabbed his burn and the small wound clean with a cloth and applied more of the sealant. "Better?"

"Sore," he said, and winced.

"Your thigh is just sore because the muscle was nicked. Don't worry about that unless it starts turning colors." Rey tossed the piece of infection into the fire. "Want breakfast?"

~

After Kylo had eaten, shoveling food into his mouth like he'd never eat again, he huddled in front of the fire, wrapped tightly in his blanket. "I don't suppose there are any more clothes?"

"Nope. Just cloaks. You'll be fine." Rey sat down by him and threw another stick of wood on. "You warm?"

"I feel like my core hasn't thawed out yet," he said. His hair had dried into a black mess of curls. He looked much younger than he was.

"How old _are_ you?" she asked.

Kylo looked taken aback. "Ah—do you know, I don't remember. I—I don't really keep track. I'm definitely—mmm. I was fifteen when I—when Snoke—well, when all that business with the Knights of Ren happened. That was…ten years ago? Maybe fifteen? I don't really know."

"I'm nineteen," she informed him.

"Oh," he said awkwardly.

"We don't have to talk about that if you don't want to," she said hurriedly.

"It's not like we have anything else to do," he said, and gave the fire a morose stare. "Uncle—Uncle Luke was always saying he saw the Skywalker side in me. My power. I—I wanted to use it. I felt he was holding me back and—Snoke found me. I don't know how. He was there from the beginning, watching me."

Rey went very quiet.

"He lured me in, he said that the things Luke were teaching me weren’t the real Jedi way, he promised me so much power. A way to bring balance to the Force. Everything I could want. I wanted—I wanted to do something, to carry on my legacy. The Skywalker legacy. Bring order to the galaxy, balance. But I—I couldn't—" he grimaced, looked down. She saw tears fall from his eyes. "It was wrong. All of it was wrong. And now it's too late."

"No," she said. "No, it's not. Stay here with me. Stay with Luke. He would help you."

"He would hate me," he said. "I killed—we killed—the Knights, his students, all the children. I killed my own father, Rey. _My father_."

"It is the Jedi way to forgive." Rey put her hand on his knee, looking at him with all the earnestness she could muster.

"You don't know the Jedi way," he said bleakly. "Luke doesn't. I don't. Nobody living does."

"We could find it," she suggested. "There's always hope."

"There is no hope!" he snarled, jerking away from her. "Is this what you wanted? To lure me in like a spooked animal, with a false dream? Wake up! I've seen your mind, Rey. Your dreams. The Jedi are never coming back, and you'll never be one of them." He grabbed the floor with one hand, his head bent. "And neither will I."

His brittle pain echoed through her in the Force. Rey rolled to her knees. "No, Kylo," she said. "We might not be Jedi, but we can still do the right thing."

"I can't. You can. You—you can go, far away from here." There were glittering, unshed tears in his dark eyes. "Just go. Steal my shuttle and go."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'll tell Snoke you overpowered me and left—that it wasn't the right time, that Luke was gone."

"Kylo, Snoke knew you were going to fail this task. He set you up to fail this task." Rey scooted closer to him, on her knees. "You know that. He's expecting you to fail him."

Kylo Ren's face was a study in emotion. "He wouldn't," he said stubbornly.

"Believe that if you like, then," she said. "You have a chance to be free of him, Kylo."

"I will never be free, don't you understand?" He reached out and gripped her shoulder. "Never! He can find me anywhere. He is stronger with the Force than anyone living. Anywhere I am, he will find me. He's done it before."

"Or," said Rey calmly, "he has a tracker on you somewhere and that's how he finds you. The Force has limits to what you can do with it. You can't see someone from across a galaxy."

"No. He is wise. He sees everything." Kylo looked unsure, though.

"Will you let me look anyway? Just to make sure?" Rey extended her palm out in a gesture of harmlessness. "If he used First Order technology, it's either a WT-452 or an RT-34. Both are small enough to be slipped under the skin, under pretense of an injection. I can find either of them. The RT model was used on slaves on Jakku. It's bigger and compatible with several kinds of life-forms. You can feel it under the skin if you know what you're looking for. The WT is smaller, like a rod."

Kylo chewed on his lip and then dropped his blanket. "Go on, then," he said, sounding defeated.

Rey started at the back of his neck and pressed down with her fingers into his warm, pale skin. He was pleasantly freckled, but there were no telltale small, irregular lumps. She moved down the back of his neck, to his shoulders, his back, every inch of skin down his spine (a favorite location, she remembered, of the slavers on Jakku) and on the backs of his arms.

"Let me check the front," she said. He obeyed, half-turning. Rey pressed her fingers to his chest, his collarbones, his neck. She heard him take a breath in when she touched his neck. "Easy," she murmured, and he relaxed, huffing a little.

"Easy for you to say," he said thickly, and she looked down and realized he was hard, the blanket tenting over his crotch.

"You must really like being checked for trackers," she quipped.

"It's not that," he mumbled. "It's—the touching. It feels nice. I haven’t had many people touch me like this. Ever."

Rey finished sweeping his torso. "Lie down flat," she ordered, and he did, almost too quickly. "I'm going to check your legs."

She felt him tense when she touched his hip and patted down his side and his wounded thigh. "Steady, there," she said.

 _Please,_ came the plaintive little thought, clear as day, and then dissolved into a wordless miasma of desire, tinged with horror and shame.

"Kylo," she said gently, and saw his hands, clenched into fists so hard his knuckles were white. Rey quickly moved to the other side, felt down the meat of his thigh and—ah. There. A small, rod-shaped lump beneath his skin. "I found something," she said, and he exhaled hard. "It looks like a WT."

"Well, it's got to come out," Kylo muttered, and pushed himself up, spreading his hand over his leg. "I see it," he said absently. "One moment."

She watched in fascination as his fingers flexed and the skin over his leg twitched. He grimaced and sweat broke out on his face as the pain of moving a two-centimeter tracker out of the deep tissue of one's leg hit him. "Let me—" she began.

"No!" he barked, and strained for the Force. "I have to do it. He marked me, tracked me like a slave, don’t you understand? _I have to do it_."

Outside, thunder rolled and a battering of rain started up against the roof.

Rey sat back helplessly and watched him tremble, bolstered only by the Force and his sheer rage. His skin broke and bled without warning, and he gasped as the tiny silver tracker floated out, his shaking hand guiding it. She watched it float in the air—and then he twitched a finger and the thing was crushed to smithereens, flinging itself into the corners of the room.

There was a heavy silence. Nothing made a noise but the rain. Kylo leaned back and stared at his leg, where blood dripped from the small hole. "He lied," he said, and Rey reached for a wet cloth.

"Yes, he did," she said. An  _I told you so_ would do no good here. "Clean yourself up. The bonding fluid is in the med-kit. I'll get you some water."

~

It wasn't until after they'd eaten again that she sensed a tiny, weak _please_ from him again, as he rested against the bed and she stirred the fire; and just like before, it quickly faded into a complicated mixture of emotion.

"Tell me what's on your mind," she said.

"I—" he began, and looked down, his thoughts blurred and indistinct but colored with thoughts of her. "I don't know," he finished lamely.

Rey raised an eyebrow and sent a suggestion through the Force, an image of her slowly undoing her cloak and dropping it, then undoing the neck of her chemise—

Kylo's face went red, his scar white against the flush on his cheeks. "Don't," he said, sounding strangled.

"Don't what?" she asked, feigning innocence, and thought about her last bath, the way the water felt on her skin, running her own hands down her breasts.

"Rey," he said desperately, sounding very much like he was begging. "Don't. I can't. I—I—don't—"

She probed and sensed his discomfort: his elevated body temperature, his dry mouth, his pounding heart, his swollen and heavy cock. "You were fine with it last time," she accused.

Kylo swallowed hard. "It was—different, you were at my mercy and I chose, I chose to be kind to get information from you and, and, it meant nothing, not, not really—"

"You were going to escape with me," she said. "You told me that."

"I changed my—I—" He was floundering, shaking. "It was _complicated_ , all right? I don't care—about you, about, about that, about, you know, the—sex, and, and—"

"You're sitting two feet away from me with an erection!" she exclaimed. "Don't sit there and tell me it doesn't mean anything! What do you _want_?"

"What?"

"What do you want?" Rey glared at him. "You're at my mercy now, and I'm kinder than you. So tell me what you want."

"Is this a trick?" he demanded, and was suddenly reminded of how she had reacted when he had said, _I want you._ Their roles had been horribly reversed—and she was right, he was at her mercy.

"No," she said simply. "Tell me."

"I can't," he breathed. "I can't, Rey. You're not—it's not—my orders—"

"You don't have to follow Snoke's stupid orders anymore," she reminded him. "You can do what you want. Decide."

"Right, but," he said, "this is complicated, all right? I wanted—on the base, I mean—I wanted to break you because I'd been ordered to find the map, but I'd been in your head and I had seen how lonely you were and I thought maybe if I showed you pleasure it would break you, and then once I got started it was like I didn't care anymore, about my orders. I just…wanted you." Guilt rolled over him again, and he ran a hand through his hair. "You—you were, you _are_ , you're _fascinating_ , and different, and I, I didn't want Snoke to have you. So I, I lied and said I could get the map from you if he would just give me a little more time, and—then you were gone."

"That's a lot of words to say you thought I was pretty," she inserted.

"I—" Kylo stammered, immediately on the defensive. "I—no! It—no, it—"

"I'm not Snoke," she told him. "You don't have to lie to me or make excuses."

He went very quiet. She sensed nothing but pain, shame, and an underlying current of desire.

"Kylo," she said again, and he looked at her. Rey reached over slowly and traced the scar she'd left on his face. He went very still, as if afraid she'd be scared off, and let her touch him. "I'm sorry about your face," she said. "I mean, I'm not sorry I did it, because you were trying to hurt me, but I am sorry it scarred."

"It's improved my looks greatly, actually," he said, and she chuckled, then spread her hands apart to cup his face. He sighed and relaxed the smallest bit.

"Yes?" she asked, searching his eyes and his mind. She saw the surge of desire and the guilt that went with it; fear, arousal, humiliation. Always a mess, this one.

"Please," he said, his lips barely moving, and she leaned over, giving him room to back out if he wanted. Her lips brushed his forehead, his scar, his cheek, his mouth.

"You should rest," she said softly against his unmarred cheek. "The storm sounds like it will go on all night."

"Mmm," he said, and turned his head to find her mouth with his. She fought the sudden urge to grab his head and yank him closer. His lips were warm and soft—he opened his lips and she pressed her teeth against his lip, a small noise escaping her throat, and sudden arousal hit her like a blaster shot, warmth spreading up to her back and down her thighs, trembling readiness in every cell of her body echoing the memory of being strapped to a chair and watching Kylo work over her.

"Oh, stars and suns," she cursed softly, and broke the kiss, pressing a hand between her legs. "No, no, no. I can't. We shouldn't."

"We," he said dizzily. She perceived his presence in her mind, that he was seeing everything happen to her body as it happened. He looked punch-drunk. "We should sleep."

"Yeah," she said.

"Are you afraid of me, Rey?" he asked gently, his chest still heaving a little. "I sense fear in you."

"I'm not afraid of you," she said. "I'm afraid of myself. I—shouldn't feel like this. But I do. And I don't know why." She took a deep breath, willing the heat away. "I wanted to—I wanted to poke and tease at you a little, to get under your skin for what you did. I didn't expect—to feel like this about you again."

"I expect both of us are having similar problems," he said dryly, and got clumsily to his feet. "When will Luke be back?"

"Oh, not for a while. It takes forever to reach Terrin. He's likely approaching it now. We didn't think the storm would be here for another week."

"He could have turned back when he saw the storm," said Kylo.

"I would have sensed that," Rey said. "I'll let you know if I sense anything at all. Let's try to get some rest."

They climbed into bed and huddled together under the blankets against the cold. "Your feet are still freezing," she said irritably.

"It's a side effect of being a head taller than everyone," he informed her as he tried to tuck his feet in a pocket of blanket away from her legs. "Circulation isn't the greatest."

Rey tucked her head under his chin and sighed. "We both need a bath," she remarked.

"Tomorrow," he said distantly, and she grunted in assent and let herself drift off into soft, regular breathing and sleep.

~

She became vaguely aware some time later that Kylo, asleep, was hard as a rock and grinding slowly against her thigh, mumbling indistinctly with his face buried in her neck. Rey jerked awake in shock and pushed him away. Kylo started awake with a hoarse shout, sat up, and drew his arm back, ready to fight, then hissed in pain as the burn tugged at his skin.

"It's nothing," Rey said, vaguely embarrassed. "Go back to sleep."

"I was—I was dreaming," he said, and shivered in the firelight. "I had you safely away. Snoke came."

"You were—you were rutting on me," she said, her face hot. "I pushed you."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll—I'll sleep on the floor, if you like."

"Yes, I think you'd better," she said, and he edged out of bed and took a few blankets with him, nestling down in them by the fire. She rolled up in the ones he'd left and faced him.

"Rey," he said after a minute.

"Hmm?"

"This, ah. Little problem I have isn't going away. I—that is, it's—not really polite, but—"

"Oh, just take care of it, then." Rey pulled the blankets up to her nose. "I won't mind."

"Sorry," he said again, and she closed her eyes until the soft, rhythmic noise of skin rubbing against skin and gentle gasps intrigued her, and she opened one eye.

Kylo was sitting, his legs askew, one knee up. His right hand was curled around the length of his cock, pumping away, and his left hand was tangled in the blankets. The sound of his irregular breathing and soft gasps filled the room.

Rey closed her eyes but it was too late. Her body was already responding to the sight in ways she didn't really think it should. Like a lance, his vision pierced her mind and saw her arousal, and Kylo bit off a choked noise.

"Please," she said, without knowing why she was saying it. She bit down hard on her bottom lip. "Don't make a mess on my floor, now."

"No," he gasped, his voice a full octave higher, and bent his head. "Just—need—this, sorry, sorry—" He wanted her to embarrass him, she realized. He liked it in this sort of situation.

"Brat," she said slowly. "Always trying to take what you want."

The only answer was a throaty moan and a flush on his cheeks visible even in the firelight. He was sweating. His hand moved faster.

"I hope you're sorry. I hope you're ashamed of yourself. Rutting on me like a kriffing _animal_ in heat, I don't know what you were _expecting_ me to do—"

Kylo curled in on himself, let out a rough cry, and came hard. She watched in fascination as thick white spurts landed on his belly and hands, his throat working frantically. "Rey," he gasped in supplication, and rested for a minute before going for a rag to wipe himself down with.

"You all right?" she ventured.

"I'm fine," he said. "Th—thank you."

"Oh. Sure. You're still sleeping on the floor, though."

He laughed, actually laughed. "Yes, I know. I won't bother you about that. And I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

Rey found herself smiling idiotically back at him. "No, of course. It's fine."

"All right. Bed, then. Good night, Rey."

"Good night, Kylo," she said, and tucked the blankets back down around her as the fire crackled.

"Ben," he said softly, a few beats later.

"Hmm?"

"Ben. My name. It's Ben."

Rey blinked in the firelight, too tired to ask or pry. "Oh. Good night, Ben."

There was a soft silence, and then, from the floor: "Thank you, Rey."


	6. Consummating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry for the delay. I wrote out my rough draft of this over a week ago and my computer crashed and I lost everything, but I actually like this version better than my original chapter! Enjoy!

Ben Solo—Kylo Ren—opened his eyes to a dim, overcast room, and a curious absence of sound. It took him a moment to realize that it had stopped raining, and that the room was cold, and that he was very sore from lying on the floor all night.

He sat up blearily, wincing at his sore muscles and wounds, and saw that Rey was still asleep, curled up in bed, her hand tucked under her chin and her hair mussed. He remembered, with some chagrin, his behavior yesterday after she'd woken before him and stoked the fire.

 _I can make up for that,_ he thought, and disentangled himself from his blanket to throw wood on the dying fire and poke at it. His efforts were rewarded with a quick, cheerful blaze, and he held his hands out over the flame, relaxing slightly as the warmth filled the room.

 _Ben Solo would make the fire,_ he thought absently. _Kylo Ren wouldn't have._

Or maybe he was wrong and Kylo Ren would have. Maybe he was only stoking the fire to get on her good side. Maybe there was no Ben Solo, and Snoke was right—that he was gone—

His train of thought was interrupted before it could devolve into full panic. Rey stirred and opened her eyes. "Hrm?" she muttered.

"It's me," he said idiotically. "Kylo."

"Yes, I know," she mumbled, and sat up, her hair a straggly mess and her blankets wrapped around her closely. "You did the fire?"

"Yes. Are you warm enough?"

"You shouldn't be up," she said, and kicked her blankets off. "How're your burns?"

"They're all right," he said dismissively, but she hurried over anyway and peered at the dressings.

"The bacta looks like it's healing everything fairly well," she informed him. "You'll still be sore for a bit, though, so don't push it."

"I wouldn't dare," he said dryly, and she rolled her eyes. "Didn't you say something about a bath?"

"I did. It's stopped raining. We should have enough water from the reservoir to use." Rey opened a shutter and peered out. "It's a soggy mess out there. Looks like it might rain again anyway."

"I'd give my left hand for a working 'fresher," Kylo groused.

"You'll live," she said primly. She grabbed a basket by the door, checked it, and swung the door wide. "Come on, I'll show you."

~

The reservoir was a large pool of water, about ten meters across, cut into the cliff that the house was built into. A few steps up and a curve around a sheer face and there it was, enclosed on all four sides by rock and moss.

Kylo followed her, still limping but determined to not make a fuss about it. He clung to the rock wall for support and stared in surprise at the clear water.

"It's steaming," he said.

"Yes, there's something underneath—a hot spring, I think, or some sort of crack in the planet's crust. It's a strange geothermal system. Master Luke told me once, but I forget the details." Rey crouched and dipped her hand into the water. "And we wash our clothes in the runoff, there." She pointed at the small channel of water leading out of the chamber and presumably down the cliff face.

They stood in awkward silence for a moment until Rey squared her shoulders and nodded. "Right. Bath." She started to slip out of her clothing.

"Wait," Kylo blurted out, half-panicked. She paused and looked at him. "I. Ah. My leg is bothering me and I might need help with the trousers."

"Oh, all right." Rey helped him to the edge of the pool and tugged his pants down, businesslike and quick. He was grateful beyond words for her clinical undressing. Being naked in the cold open air wasn't making…certain things…well, he was glad, anyhow.

He watched covertly, feeling slightly guilty, as Rey undressed and stretched by the edge. He hadn't seen her naked in the daylight before. Her body was lean and slender; taut and muscled. She reached up and undid her hair knots, then combed her hair with her fingers as she slipped into the pool. "Ahhh," she said, and went under, resurfacing, water glistening on her skin and plastering her hair to her head in a shining dark cap.

"How is it?" he called out.

"It's amazing. Come on in." She stood, exposing her body from the waist up, and reached for the soap in the basket.

Kylo awkwardly slid down the rock and into the hot water, a small moan of pleasure and slight pain escaping his lips. The water was hot and soft as honey, swallowing up his body and leaching the cold from his bones.

"Can you swim all right?" she asked.

"Yes," he said dreamily, and floated on his back, eyes half shut. "This is lovely."

"Stay like that and I'll wash your hair," she ordered. He let her rub his hair full of soap and scrub it clean until the strands squeaked. He let out a few involuntary noises while she worked—it just felt so _good_ , like nothing had felt since—since he didn't know when. The only comparable sensation, he thought, might be eating a hot meal after being out in the snow all day, or maybe—

Instant memories flooded him, memories of spreading Rey's slim legs and driving into her, letting her body swallow him up and the heat and the pressure and the—

Rey's hands jerked and he opened his eyes, blinking like an owl into her upside-down face.

"Oh," he said stupidly. "Oh. Sorry."

"You have got to stop feeling guilty every time you think about that," she said.

That caught him off-guard. "What?"

"It happened. It's—not a big deal, really. Just stop with the guilt, because I can feel it and then _I_ feel bad and don’t know how to help." Rey rinsed his hair and started working on her own, not making eye contact.

"Rey," he said, and she bit on her lip and rubbed soap into her hair. "Rey, it was a big deal. For both of us."

"I—it's not," she said weakly. "It. It wasn't."

"You don't have to blow it off like it's nothing. It's all right." Kylo stood, and the water lapped around his hips.

"When I heard you—in my head, when you said you were coming for me? I'd never been afraid of someone coming back for me—I've wanted someone to come back for me my whole life—but I was afraid then," she said quietly, and it hung like a frozen blaster bolt in the air between them.

Kylo's throat felt thick. "I never meant to scare you," he said. "I'm sorry."

She leaned down and rinsed her hair clean, still not looking at him.

"Why are you being kind to me?" he asked.

"Because you're alone, too," she said simply, and handed him the soap.

Kylo scrubbed the rest of his body down as well as he could with his limited range of motion while she crouched down in the water till it reached her chin and watched him, her two dark eyes just above the water like wet leaves. He could feel her uncertainty; her torn emotions and her curiosity.

"I can't reach my back," he said, and she splashed over to help almost instantly.

"Bend down a bit," she said, and he obliged. She scrubbed the rough soap across his shoulders and down, very methodical, very quick.

"Not so fast, you'll scrub my skin off," he said, letting a smile into his voice.

She chuckled, but slowed down a little, going back over the places she'd washed before.

When her bare hand touched him, he had to physically stop himself from jerking in surprise, suppressed it into a small shudder. Her hand stilled for a moment, then continued to wipe suds from the back of his arm.

 _I didn't know he was so sensitive there,_ he heard her think, and he prayed, desperately, that she wouldn't brush against his lower back, please, no, yes, anything, because if she kept touching him he was going to crack, break, shatter into a billion pieces and never be able to put himself back together again.

 _You're pathetic,_ he told himself furiously. _One touch and you're already practically begging for it._

 _I heard that,_ said Rey through the Force, and placed her hand between his shoulder blades, square in the middle. Her skin was like fire, like the sun—the water was freezing in comparison.

Kylo went stock-still and miserably gritted his teeth as his cock swelled and bobbed up in the water. "Rey," he forced out.

"Why don't you just _talk_ to me?" she said. "Just tell me what you want."

"Because it's not what _you_ want," he snapped, his hands curled into fists. " _Please,_ Rey."

"You don't know what I want. You don't ask."

"I can sense just fine that you don't _know_ what you want," he said. "And my control is terrible on a _good_ day, so if you keep doing this to me, if you keep driving me to my limits—and I know you know you're doing it because you can sense what I feel—I am going to turn around and I am going to take you right here in this pool and I'm not going to be gentle, Rey. So it's up to you. What do you want?"

~

Rey stood stock still, her hand still pressed to Kylo's back. His thoughts were chaotic and mostly obscured. She didn't know what to do—

_What do you want?_

She wanted him. She liked seeing him lose his composure and get flustered, but she wanted him. She had been terrified of him, but she wanted him. He'd been kind—she knew he could be kind, and selfish, and cruel and gentle and good all at once and she'd hated him in the snow on Takodana but she wanted him anyway.

Rey took her hand away from his back. Kylo's startled surprise and disappointment shot through him—

\--and she pressed both her hands to his lower back, let her fingers glide along the dimples above his behind, stroked the soft skin there.

Kylo's emotions switched so fast it nearly gave her whiplash. He turned around and she instinctively backed up. She'd forgotten how tall he was. "I warned you," he said in a voice that was almost a growl, and she let out a half-hysterical giggle and turned for the edge, scrambling out.

His wounds slowed him a little but he was hot on her heels, lifting himself out and shaking the water out of his eyes and hair. She backed away, grinning. "You'll have to catch me," she challenged, and he lunged for her but just missed her.

Rey didn't go near the opening in the cliff face, just darted back and forth laughing until he finally caught hold of her and pinned her to the wall. "You little minx," he breathed, and she stretched her neck up to be kissed, and he obliged hard, all teeth and tongue and frantic movement.

Kylo fumbled between her legs and found her, still damp, but hot and open to his touch. "Rey," he murmured against her cheek, and lifted her leg to his good hip with one hand and lined himself up to her with the other.

"Please," she moaned. "Wait, are you—standing? We—but your injuries—"

"Shut up," he gasped, and kissed her. Rey found his shoulders and held on for dear life while he pulled her leg a little higher and then shoved his cock inside her (his knees almost buckling with how _good_ it was, Rey saw through the Force).

Rey shrieked and scrabbled at his back. "I'm—" she choked. "Please, Kylo, oh—" It was so good, so good; she didn't know where his pleasure ended and hers began, and she'd forgotten what this was like.

"You" he growled, and held himself up, fucking in short, shallow thrusts because his thigh burn really was aching quite a bit and direct contact wasn't in the cards. The pain only spurred him on and focused him into laserlike intensity. Rey saw it and tried to distract him—she couldn't take the teasing, not-deep-enough sensation between her legs. She wanted more. She _needed_ more.

She clawed at his back. "Harder," she begged. "Harder, Kylo, you _promised_ , you said—"

"I said I wouldn't be gentle," he got out between thrusts. "I didn't say I'd give you everything you wanted."

She let out a frustrated howl and tried to jerk her own hips, tried to meet him. He smacked her thigh and pinned her hips to the rock with one hand, his other still gripping her leg. "Behave," he ordered.

"Brat," she spat back, and let out a litany of curses and moaning while he kept at it, her hands dragging across his back and his neck and his hair.

"I like you like this," he purred into her ear. "I think I can go for a good long while like this. What do you think?"

Her answer was an inarticulate sob and a whispered, "Please." _You're horrible,_ she wailed through the Force, and his answer was a savage grin.

"That's better," he said appreciatively, and kissed her. "First you, then me." He pulled out of her and left her just enough time to get her bearings and gasp before he was down on his knees, two fingers inside of her and his mouth on her.

"Oh, gods, gods, stars and suns, I hate you," she groaned, and bucked into his face, his hair in her fists. "Hate—you, you— _brat_ —"

"Mmmm," he rumbled, and she let out a high-pitched noise and ground out her climax into his face. Kylo caught her as she staggered, weak in the knees from the force of her orgasm, and held her up.

"Lean on me," he said, and braced his bad leg against the rock, sliding back into her. "Oh, _good_ girl," he gasped. "All right. Hold on. I'll be quick."

Rey gripped his shoulders and moaned as he fucked deep into her and jerked out at the last second, spilling over her stomach and shuddering, panting, groaning nonsense into her neck.

"Your leg," she said worriedly after catching her breath. He lifted his head.

"'S fine, 's just a little blood," he said, and put his head back down, breathing hard. His legs were trembling.

Rey lifted her hands and stroked his hair, feeling nothing but tenderness. "We should rinse off again," she said. "And I should look at that leg. I think you broke the seal."

"We should," he said. "Give me a moment. That was—a lot."

"Your leg hurting at all?"

"Yes." He chuckled. "Worth it. Ugh. Let's. Let's lie down a moment."

Rey and Kylo slid down the rock face awkwardly until both of them were stretched out at length on the ground, quiet and catching their breath. Rey closed her eyes and listened to him breathe. "Your leg," she reminded him after a few more minutes.

"Right, go on," he said, and she sat up and examined the thigh burn.

"You _did_ break the seal," she accused. "And after I worked so hard."

"Sorry," he said in a voice that wasn't sorry at all, and flashed her a crooked-toothed smile. "You can fix it, right?"

"Yes." Rey scrunched her nose up at him and went back to the pool, dipped in and washed herself off. "Get over here and rinse it out or I'll throw you in."

Kylo limped over and lowered himself back into the pool. A soft sound of pain escaped him as the hot water lapped over his burn, but he endured it and gave himself a cursory rinse before pulling himself back out.

Over their heads, the sky darkened. "We're going to get caught in the rain," Rey exclaimed. "Quick! House! Let's go!"

Kylo laughed as he limped down the stone steps, still naked, holding his cloak. "Wait for me!" he called.

"You better hurry!" she called back, laughter in her voice as she rounded the bend.

He hadn't felt this happy since—since before—

Rey's presence peered into his head. _Since before the Knights of Ren,_ she said, and he stared at her back. She was opening the door of the house, not looking at him. _Right? Ben?_

 _Don't call me that,_ he said silently, and followed her inside.

"But you told me—"

"I said it was my name. I didn't say I wanted you to call me that." Kylo sat down on the bed and fumbled for the med-kit, pulling out a bacta sheet and dabbing at his leg. He hissed in pain and angrily swabbed at his wound harder.

"Why do you hurt yourself?" she asked plaintively.

"So I can focus," he said, and crumpled the sheet to nothing in his hand. "It—it grounds me."

"Did Snoke teach you that?"

"Yes," he said shortly, and to his horror, felt hot tears well up behind his eyes. "I—I don't know any other way. If I did—I forgot."

Rey sat on the bed, leaving her cloak by his at the door. "Don't," she said softly, and cupped his scarred cheek.

"Don't look at me like that," he said thickly. "You—it's like, like you're looking at something good. I'm not a good man, Rey. Don't make that mistake."

"How do you want me to look at you?" She dropped her hand and regarded him with some wariness.

"I want—" he bit off the second part of his sentence and stared miserably into the coals of the fire while desperately trying to veil the thought, _I want you to look at me like you hate me, I want you to hurt me; I want you to hold me down and ground me and guide me._

He wanted _truth._ There was nothing so bloody or brutal in the galaxy as plain and honest truth, and he craved it with every fiber of his body.

Her sharp little intake of breath alerted him to the fact he'd failed at hiding from her. "Oh, " she said, simply.

"Rey," he said, half-afraid, breathing her name like a prayer.

She grabbed him by the hair and turned him to face her, sharp and rough, and his cock jerked to half-attention. "You want this?" she demanded.

"Yes," he gasped, and she tightened her grip, leaned in, kissed him hard. She bit him, too; bit his lower lip and came away with blood in her teeth and a stained grin. _Oh, beautiful,_ he thought.

Rey pushed him over onto his back and dug her thumb into the tender burn on his waist. He bucked and shrieked, pain shooting through him. Tears sprang to his eyes as his cock throbbed in agony. " _Rey_! Rey, Rey, oh, oh—"

She slapped his cheek and he gasped, mouth open like a fish. Warmth spread up his face and made him tremble. _Suns and stars, please, again,_ he thought: she hit him on the other cheek and he moaned, a low, needy noise that made him want to crawl into the floor and never come out.

"Tell me what you want," she said. "No Force. Use your words. I want to hear you."

"Tell—tell me I'm pathetic," he begged, his face hot with the shame of asking.

"You're pathetic. A disgrace to the First Order," she said with some relish. "You're weak, and you'll never be anything but weak and pathetic." His cock jerked and she looked down, then back at him. "Look at you. You really are getting off on this, aren't you?"

The only answer he managed was a throaty moan. Rey flicked the tip of his cock, catching the tender skin there under the head with her nail, and he almost screamed. " _Rey!_ " A few drops of pre-ejaculate leaked out of the tip, and she spread it around with her thumb. He jerked and shuddered, desperately trying to catch his breath.

"You want me to use my hand?" she asked. He blinked at her. "I found a few old romance holobooks onboard the Falcon," she said, slightly pink, and he snorted. "I know what to do."

"Yes. Just." He let his head fall back. "Tighter, and twist at the top—"

"Be quiet. I don't listen to spoiled brats tell me what to do," she ordered.

 _Hell, she sounds like Hux,_ he thought, and her grip tightened and his fist clutched the blanket he lay on. "Please—" he begged, "—please, Rey, I can't, I can't."

"Can't what?" She twisted at the top, just how he liked it. "Hmm?"

"Can't—can't kriffing _come_ again, so soon, _oh_ —" His hips lifted off the bed as she traced the outline of his thigh burn, teasing pain along the edges.

"Yes, you can. I feel it." She stopped stroking him long enough to lick her palm and start again, slow and methodical. "I feel you. I know you can do it. Come on, Kylo."

"I need—" He was going crazy, he wanted her to, to, to— "Rey. Choke me. Do it."

"My hands are full," she informed him, and gave him a particularly good twist. He stuttered and curled in on himself, half-sitting up.

"Use the _Force_ , damn you," he sobbed, and felt her presence again, peering deeper inside, seeing how close he was, how he just needed that little push—

An invisible pressure closed down on his throat and he gasped, but no air came out or in. _Oh, yes, yes,_ he thought, hips bucking into her. He couldn't speak. He couldn't do anything but rut into her hand over and over and over until his muscles failed, his oxygen almost gone, his vision going dark around the edges—and his orgasm hit him like all six million tons of an Imperial Class Star Destroyer, completely blindsided him, and he must have actually blacked out because when he opened his eyes again he could breathe and Rey was wiping off his belly and his chest. Her hands were gentle. He felt very tired.

"Hello," he said blearily.

"Mmm, you're awake," she said. "Good. I thought I killed you for a moment there."

"Wouldn't have been a huge loss," he said dully. His lip was swollen where she'd bitten it, and it tasted of bacta. She must have tended it while he was out.

Rey leaned down and kissed the unharmed side of his mouth, gently. "Don't say that," she told him with a ferocity that surprised him. "Don't say it ever."

"All right," he said, blinking.She tossed the dirty cloth to the floor carelessly, then curled up on the bed, draping her arm across his chest.

"I won't let anyone hurt you again," she whispered.

"I—" He couldn't imagine the reason for her sudden change in mood.

Rey sensed his uncertainty and snuggled closer. "When you came, you—made this wrenching noise, and I let you breathe, and I saw inside your head and all I saw was your memories of pain. With the Knights of Ren, after Takodana."

"Oh," he said, and felt suddenly very much like someone had turned his stomach inside out. How absurd, when clearly she was the priority, the one Snoke wanted—

_If anyone lays a hand on her, I will cut it off and feed it to them, finger by finger._

Rey blinked. Kylo didn't know if he'd said it aloud or not. It didn't matter. She was kissing him again, her hot skin pressed to his, her hands on his chest. _You won't let them hurt me,_ she said. _I know._

"Never," he said fiercely, and rolled over, ignoring the pain in his side as he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his forehead to hers. "I won't let anyone hurt you, Rey. I swear. Not now, not ever."

She kissed him again, and they lay there together on the bed, listening to the rain pound against the roof.


	7. Returning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new adventure begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I M SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO FINISH THIS. I was in a car wreck this week and then class on top of that and for the past freaking year I've been bogged under. So here you go, thank you all for being so patient and not giving up on me. xoxo

The sun rose pale and clear the next morning through shreds of light cloud, and the rain had slowed to a light drizzle. Water glittered on every blade of grass and shone off every stone. The sea far below was deep gray and still churning.

Rey was hanging their wet things out to dry while Kylo Ren sat on a stool by the door, his healing leg stretched out on the wet grass. He was in Luke's clothes, looking very different in his light greys and browns. At Rey's insistence, he'd tied back his mess of hair with a leather thong.

He looked—better, she thought. Like the man he was supposed to have become. Like the Jedi Ben Solo could have been.

"I nearly forgot," she called out to him. "Your mother sends her love."

He started in his seat, then rubbed his nose. "Ah. Yes. I—I should find her. And—and tell her how sorry I am."

"We can go back together," she said, coming and sitting down on the other stool. She leaned back in the pale sunlight and sighed, enjoying the warmth soaking through her sleeveless shirt. "I sense Luke's return. Can you feel it?"

"Yes," he said quietly, and looked down, fidgeting with his hands.

"Are you afraid?" Rey asked.

"I shouldn't be. I'm doing the right thing." He offered a half-smile and looked away, over the ocean. "Like you said—not the Jedi way, but the right thing to do."

Rey reached for his fingers and closed her hand over them, stilling his nervous movement. "You can't change what you've done, Kylo. You can only acknowledge and move forward."

"I cannot go back," he half-whispered. "I… can never go back." _To Snoke,_ amended the words from his mind to hers.

The Force surged then, such as she had never felt before. Like a current had been reversed, a wave going back out to sea. She felt like a swimmer in the ocean below, twisted and turned backwards and upside down, and she let go of his fingers in disorientation.

When he looked at her again, he smiled, and his eyes were warm and brown, like his mother's.

"Ben Solo?" she whispered, and his smile told her all she needed to know.

~

They were sparring in the yard with a pair of sticks, their lightsabers resting on a rock in the sun.

"Across!" shouted Ben, slashing toward her chest. Rey parried and swiveled on the ball of her foot, then stabbed at his waist.

"Keep your guard up!" she chided, and tossed her stick from one hand to the other as she rose and tapped him lightly on his forearm. "Now you've got no hand."

"Damn you!" he said, shaking his fist and laughing. "Again?"

Rey felt a curious nudge in the Force and turned to look at the entrance to the yard that led to the steps below.

Luke Skywalker stood there, watching them both. His face was unreadable.

Rey dropped her stick and froze. She had no idea what to do. The Force was quiet, not giving her any hint or a clue as to Luke's mind. He had veiled himself better than Kylo could.

It was Ben who broke the silence, taking three strides across the grass and then kneeling, head bent. "Master Luke," he said, voice steady and small.

Rey hurried across the yard and knelt by him too. "Master Luke," she echoed, staring at her feet.

Luke was still silent. He walked to them and stood looking down at them both. Rey looked up and met his eyes, and he looked into hers.

"Ben Solo has returned to us," she said firmly.

Luke's eyes flickered over to Ben, and Rey felt the probing of the Force around her, disturbing like a wake, and Ben raised his head and opened his mind and Luke _saw_ and she wanted to hide. _Not that, don't show him that,_ she thought in a panic.

But Luke only looked, and then said, "Rise," in a gentle voice.

Rey stood, but Ben remained on the ground. She saw his shoulders shaking and knew he was crying.

"Ben," said Luke, and knelt in front of him, metal hand on his shoulder and flesh hand on his cheek. "Ben. It is all forgiven."

"I killed—my father—and so many others—your students—"

"You did. And now you are here."

"How can you forgive me?"

Luke pulled him to stand and looked him in the eyes. "Because I failed to see that Snoke was preying on your mind. Because I was too blind. You are not the only one at fault. And I—I am sorry." A faint smile moved his beard. "You must forgive me."

"Uncle," Ben said, sounding broken, and hugged him suddenly and tightly.

Rey felt awkwardly out of place, a third repulsor. A useless spanner. She looked at the sky and the sea, and then remembered. "Master! The storm has already come and gone."

"Yes, it has," said Luke, and held Ben at arm's length. "I saw it as I sailed. I could not turn back for the storm, so I weathered it in Terrin." He set down his pack. "I meditated there long in thought, and saw that Kylo Ren was coming for you, but I also saw Ben Solo returning." He gestured at the pack.

Ben opened it and found new robes and a mishmash of odd looking mechanical parts jumbled into a leather bag, along with foodstuffs and other miscellaneous household items. "What are these for?" he asked.

"Your new lightsaber," Luke said. "We can use the casing of your old one, or we can build one. Either way, I have crystals from Ilum, and they will serve you better than a synthetic, and be far more stable. Fitting, I think."

Rey felt tears well up behind her eyes and a lump in her throat. She turned away and wiped her nose with her robe sleeve.

"Rey? What troubles you?"

"I don't know," she said, turning back. "I—I'm happy. I've never cried when I was happy before."

He smiled and touched her shoulder. "Don’t be ashamed. You have done well."

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"But if you've made a mess of my kitchen," he added, walking toward the house, "I will be extremely put out."

~

They spent that night going over everything Ben knew about the locations and whereabouts of the First Order, Snoke, and plans. Luke decided they would return to D'Qar and the Resistance.

"Your mother must know of this," he said over supper. "And she'll be worried. I don't know who worries her most, you or I."

Ben chuckled.

"She's rather like a mother to me, too," Rey said pensively.

They both went silent. Rey looked at them curiously. "I only meant that she was kind to me. I—I am sorry if I offended you…"

Luke looked at her. "No, no offense," he said. "But I think Ben has a piece of the puzzle that is your past, locked deep inside."

"A—what?" She turned at look at Ben.

He steeled himself as if for a blow. "When I brought the Knights of Ren and…massacred the other students, you were the only one left."

Rey stared at him.

"You were strong in the Force, but not trained yet. You were only four. Do you remember it?"

Rey stared at him, and then remembered with a shock her visions in Maz Kanata's chamber on Takodana. The rain. The darkness. The man in black, saber raised over her. Kylo Ren stabbing him through the back, a scarlet blade erupting from his chest.

"I—" She staggered back, shaking. "I thought it was a vision of the future."

"No, Rey," said Luke. "The Force shows us past, present, and future. It is all the same."

"What happened to me?" she demanded, tears in her eyes.

"I left you there," said Ben bitterly.

"And I knew I had to keep you safe," said Luke. "You were so strong in the Force. It was raw, flowing through you. I took you to Jakku and took your memories of the Academy, of me. I put one thought into your mind—to stay on Jakku and someone would come for you one day."

"My family?" asked Rey.

Ben leaned forward. "Your parents are—"

"—another story for another time," said Luke. "But rest assured you are safe, and they are far beyond your reach now."

Rey squeezed her eyes shut. Hot tears dripped down her cheeks. "Do they know where I am?" she asked.

Luke patted her hand. "No one knew where you were after the massacre. It was too dangerous. They believed you dead. Nobody has spoken to them for a very long time."

Rey bent her head and waited until the urge to run into the night crying had passed and her resolve was steel again, then she looked up.

"So, when do we leave for D'Qar?"

"In the morning we depart." Luke stood. "Ben, you will sleep on the floor with Rey. I will sleep in my own bed and do my best to forget what the Force has shown me."

Ben turned pink. Rey choked on her food.

"We could just sleep outside," she said when she could breathe. "The weather is nice tonight and the rain has stopped."

Luke smiled. "Take blankets, it will be cold. And if I hear a noise from either of you that isn't snoring, you'll be sleeping in the Falcon."

~

Past midnight, the wind picked up fiercely and Rey was woken by Ben shuffling about in the dark. "What's wrong?" she asked, disoriented.

"It's freezing," he said. _Do you want to sleep in the Falcon after all?_

"Let's go," she said, and they gathered their blankets and robes and hurried down the steps to the Corellian freighter waiting for them below.

"I haven't been inside this thing for a while," remarked Ben as he closed the gangplank and turned around.

"We can sleep in the crew quarters," Rey said. "Down the corridor and on the right."

"The bottom bunk in the back folds out to a double," Ben said, and lifted an eyebrow.

Rey grinned. "Last one in is a son of a Hutt."

They made the bunk up and crawled into their nest of blankets, warm and close. They listened to the wind howling outside and Rey felt herself drifting off.

She saw—or dreamed?—Ben was standing in the cockpit. He was crying. They were in space, the blackness and the tiny stars glowing beyond the durasteel frame. He was doing something with his hands—holding something curved and white. She couldn't see what it was--

Rey jerked awake with a start to the sound of footsteps. She was alone.

"Ben?" she called out, pulling on her tunic and robe.

He poked his head around the door. "Morning. Luke is heading down, so we'd better clean up."

"I saw you last night in the cockpit," she said uncertainly. He blinked and looked away. "What were you holding?"

"This," he said shortly, and handed her a large, curved, sharp organic object that had been ornately carved. "It's a Corellian sand panther claw. They're venomous. Dad gave this to me when I was ten. It's been in the family for a long time. He said one of his ancestors killed the biggest sand panther anyone had ever seen and they kept it, passing it down from father to son."

Rey turned it over in her hand. "What do the symbols mean?"

"They're old letters from the Corellian alphabet from before Basic was implemented. Each letter has a meaning behind the sound, and each Solo has left his mark on it. Dad carved an _eski,_ for 'a careless rebel'. I was carving a _rhotoh,_ which is the symbol for—the closest word in Basic would be _returning son full of sorrow_. It's ' _benammi'ayot'_ on Corellia." Ben looked discomfited.

Rey saw the fresh carved symbol and smiled. "It's beautiful," she said, and started when the ramp slid open and Luke walked in with a pack.

"Ah," he said, seeing the claw. "Han never showed me that until after you were born."

Ben tucked it into his belt pouch. "Some things are meant to be hidden," he said pensively. Rey nearly missed the scrap of flimsiplast that Ben tucked into his other hand as he walked away down the corridor.

Luke watched him go, and turned to Rey. "I hear you are an excellent pilot," he said with a smile. "Shall we go?"

"You get to be my copilot," she said with a grin, and bounded away toward the cockpit.

Luke sighed as he watched her go. "I swear, I was never that young and enthusiastic," he said to the walls, and then made his way to join his apprentice in the cockpit of the freighter that had once destroyed the second Death Star.

~

Ben Solo sat in the crew bunks, reading the note that had been wrapped around the sand panther claw.

_Dear ~~Ben~~ ~~Kylo Ren~~ Son,_

_As I write this, you're off doing who knows what, who knows where. Your mother is worried sick and won't stop crying—she's going to meetings red in the face and sniffly. Chewie is a wreck. He keeps telling me it couldn't be you and there's some kind of mistake but we all know better. Uncle Luke has disappeared, and so has the girl. You know the girl. The youngest student, the one you couldn't kill. The four year old._

_I have to believe that my son Ben is still alive in you somewhere. I know one day you will come back to us. I have to believe that, or I'd be a hell of a wreck, and then who would take care of your mom and Chewie?_

_I know we aren't perfect. I know we didn't see everything going on with you and this Snoke character. I'm sorry, son. I'm so sorry. I'm not cut out to be a father, never was. But there is something you left here the last time I took you for a ride in the Falcon, a few weeks ago, and I think you left it on purpose. I found it stuffed between the bulkhead and the bunk in the crew cabins. I'm going to wrap this note in it and stow it in our hiding place, so if Ben Solo comes back here one day, he'll remember who he is and where he comes from._

_You're gonna be the death of me one day, kid. But your mom and I will always love you, no matter what._

_Dad_

Outside, the vastness of space enveloped the freighter as the engines thrust them through the atmosphere and beyond the reach of gravity. In the cockpit, Rey entered the coordinates for D'Qar and engaged the hyperdrive. The stars bled into screaming blue streaks as they accelerated into hyperspace.

Back in the crew cabins, Ben carefully folded the flimsiplast into a neat square and tucked it and the claw into his pouch. He slid to the floor, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and began to meditate. The Force washed around him and welcomed him home, home, _home_ at last.


End file.
